


Subject Untitled

by amazinmango



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:29:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 59,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazinmango/pseuds/amazinmango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From <a href="http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/20092.html?thread=49928316">this prompt</a> and inspired by the associated video on the Inception kink meme. Eames is an android somewhat out of the ordinary, and Arthur's the former Fischer-Morrow QA Specialist who stole him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Honestly I'm looking for some help around the house," Arthur said. It seemed to Eames that he never stopped moving, really—always animated, if in his smooth and efficient way. For a moment, he reminded Eames of his own nature, except in the ways Arthur was deliciously human. The way he sipped his coffee, how his eyes closed while he inhaled steam.

Eames preferred tea. But he thought he could rather get to like this Arthur.  
  
"And occasionally I'll need some help with...heavy lifting."  
  
Eames raised an eyebrow. "And what exactly are you needing lifted, love?" he said.  
  
Arthur paused, though his brow didn't furrow all that much. "...the endearments aren't necessary. I'll be happy to explain to you when we get there."  
  
Eames followed along gamely after Arthur set down his mug. "Good job with the coffee, and thanks again, but I can handle my own morning brew from now on."  
  
"I _am_ here to help around the house," Eames reminded him.  
  
Arthur didn't miss a beat. "With what I ask you to," he said. "My coffee is something I'm reasonably certain I can handle."  
  
"Is it a human thing?" Eames asked.  
  
"What, like having control over my exact preferences? Knowing that while you're perfectly designed to provide me with the same cup of coffee I could make myself, I need the knowledge that I've put precisely enough sugar in the mug?"  
  
Eames was startled into a laugh, and oddly it was that that made Arthur turn to look at him. "I suppose."  
  
Arthur...smirked. "I'll make you a deal. You don't make suppositions and I'll return the favor."  
  
Eames out-and-out grinned. "Now that sounds like a plan, darling."  
  
Arthur stopped walking, and it took Eames a moment to notice. He'd been—staring, and Arthur's sudden stop allowed him to truly look. He felt, of all things, caught.  
  
Arthur—he was staring too. "Cadeir—"  
  
"Eames, please."  
  
"...you want me to call you another version of 'chair.'"  
  
Eames' brows shot up. "You know Welsh?" He was utterly delighted.  
  
Arthur's wry smirk was slowly returning. "You're special, aren't you?"  
  
Eames' froze. He blinked a few times, an unnecessary reaction, and he felt—odd. His body wasn't warm on the inside. His skin—artificially warmed by energy that—his belly. He didn't have a belly. It was...warm, there.  
  
"I..."  
  
"Eames...?"  
  
"Please," Eames said suddenly. His heart—his coolant circulatory unit was beating too fast. "I—don't. Please."  
  
Arthur was suddenly right in front of him, and somehow, Eames' optics hadn't seen him move. Arthur's hands—they were on his shoulders. "Eames," Arthur said gently. "I don't know why you're—you. But I'd never—don't worry."  
  
Eames shook. Arthur just _knew_. How did he know? Eames was shaking, but he didn’t know how to shake. Had no biological need for it, yet— "You won't have them take me back?"  
  
Arthur's eyes darkened then. "Never," he hissed fiercely. "Eames, I don't know you. But I can tell you're—special. You're different. If I sent you back they'd just recall you, disassemble you, and—that's not gonna happen."  
  
Arthur's face was so warm, somehow, looking at it. The energy there was tangible. Just like that Eames stopped shaking, and suddenly he beamed, somehow breathless in a way that wasn't physical. "Thank you, darling."  
  
Arthur blinked, and his hands dropped off of Eames’ shoulders. The smirk, however, was back. A moment of strangely not-uncomfortable silence passed between them, and Eames listened to the bugs that pootled around Arthur’s plants, the rays of sunshine that pushed between taller buildings to illuminate his rooftop gardens.  
  
“Come on,” Arthur said, a slight dimple appearing in his cheek. “The plants aren’t going to water themselves.”

 

* * *

 

"Why did you call yourself a chair?"  
  
Arthur asks this as he carefully prunes the _Dendrophylax lindenii_ before him, one of many. The plants line the sides of Arthur's greenhouse, and several specimens like the one Arthur is working on rest in the center area on a medium-height table.  
  
Eames monitors the temperature of the wood that anchors the orchids along the north-facing greenhouse wall. As a leafless variety of the Vandeae family, these orchids don't need pruning per se—their root systems are carefully controlled to Arthur's specifications, however.  
  
The humidity is high in the greenhouse and the air stagnant. "Bad for them," Arthur had said, "if there's too much movement of the air. They're glorified swamp lilies."  
  
Eames stares at the stalk of one orchid contemplatively. None of them have bloomed yet—green stalks with spearheads on the end, sticking out from tangled roots that wrap around the natural logs Arthur has reaching across the length of the greenhouse. Damp, pungent moss rests under each log, bound with twine, and Arthur is very clear about ensuring that the roots of the orchids don't embed themselves there. Eames isn't sure why—if he wanted, he could reference the information about this particular _Dendrophylax_ , how it is sometimes called less elegant names like the White Frog Orchid or Palm Polly.  
  
He wonders, for a moment, if Arthur chose them because of their common name. There's something to it, perhaps. Orchids are pretentious enough to grow, and the Ghost Orchid sounds somehow unobtainable, elusive. Not like a Palm Polly, some kind of common swamp plant.  
  
Arthur's orchids are different than those he would find in the wild, Eames knows. _If_ he could find any. Here, their roots are slender and clump together in balls above their logs, sending out tendrils to seek sunlight. In the wild, they'd be more snarled, tangled things thick and bent.  
  
"I think it was something of a joke," Eames ventured, some minutes later. This has become routine; he or Arthur poses a question while they work in his gardens, and time may pass unobserved but for their quiet work before either one answers. Eames hasn't asked many questions, of yet. He feels a lingering...hesitance, if he wouldn't call it fear—  
  
 _I’m scared!_  
  
Arthur, for his part, is blunt. Eames hasn't elected to withhold any answers, and he can't help but wonder sometimes if he'd be capable of doing so. In his own way, however, Eames appreciates Arthur’s forthrightness.  
  
“You didn’t choose it?” Arthur’s next inquiry is delivered from somewhere under the center table, and it lacks a lilting inflection—a half-question, really, as though Arthur knows the answer already. A lot of his questions are like that, while others are more simple, more open. Ones and zeroes.  
  
“No,” Eames says. He reaches out to run his finger along one thin spear of a root, straining skywards towards the glass sides of Arthur’s greenhouse, where the sun is scattered a million times over in condensed water droplets. Eames magnifies them, and in a moment of fancy, pictures billions of blooming Ghost Orchids reflected back at him. He wonders what the image would look like, looking into his own eyes—the perspective from a tiny bug that Arthur would never permit inside his greenhouse, crawling up the delicate green stem to the curling white petal of an orchid, gently waving antennae back at the giant thing looking back.  
  
“Eames?”  
  
Eames blinks, and turns back to the interior of the greenhouse, damp and hot, away from the bright sun. “I—sorry, did you say something?”  
  
Arthur’s standing again, and he appears to be taking a moment to just look at Eames. He does that, too. “I asked if you chose your name, the Welsh word for chair.”  
  
Eames has the absurd desire to clear his throat. He doesn’t need to do that. “I have a number, naturally. I didn’t find it particularly fetching. I believe I was called a piece of furniture more than once, yes? Like my brethren.”  
  
 _He’s nothing more than a bookcase. Ask him anything, and he’ll answer. He’ll cook you dinner, he’ll mop your damn floors. Then he’ll fuck your wife, if you don’t want to indulge the bitch._  
  
 _I think these were made with faggots in mind. You see the lips on this line? He’s a bookcase, sure, but one they can bend over and fuck._  
  
“So...chair.”  
  
Eames shrugged, and Arthur watched the movement as if mildly fascinated by it. “Why Welsh?”  
  
“I want to see England,” Eames said immediately.  
  
Arthur’s right eyebrow arched, and Eames was entranced by the motion. “Hence the accent.”  
  
Eames smiled, but he wasn’t showing any teeth. “I can mimic any voice you like, love.”  
  
 _It’s not the lips I’m worried about on these ones. It’s_ this _one, here. He’s got a fucking mouth on him._  
  
The smirk that was almost forming on Arthur’s face vanished, and something hard settled underneath his mobile features. “I don’t want anything from you but for you to be who you are,” he said, and he sounded strange. Eames wouldn’t call it anger. It wasn’t quite there, but it was also so far beyond petty emotion—insofar as Eames understood it—that it was just Arthur.  
  
Arthur didn’t expect an answer to that, apparently, as he set down his pruning shears—delicate little things, with well-worn handles—and left the greenhouse, and Eames in it.  
  
Just as well, Eames thought, because he didn’t have an answer for him either.

 

* * *

 

“I believe the charming term is ‘pissing down,’ is it not?” Eames is not-quite-grinning behind a cup of tea, and there is something indefinably disarming about it. His almost-human mannerisms are as uncanny as they are calculated. Arthur likes to think that he can detect when Eames deliberately employs this mannerism or that look—yet there are times when a subtle shift of eyes or a quirk of lips seem so natural that even Arthur feels himself respond.  
  
Ariadne, at least, does not appear immune to Eames’ somewhat crude _bonhomie_. Arthur feels that nothing Eames does is natural, per se—learned or programmed, all of it. Still, Arthur can’t deny Eames exhibits his human characteristics with something of an artistic touch, and that he does well.  
  
Arthur looks at Eames’ face behind his mug, the way his eyes crinkle. At how his hair isn’t quite neat, but casually bed-mussed; the way his smile isn’t entirely genuine, small but noticeable in the way you smile at somebody you don’t quite yet know; the gentle flush of his cheeks as though he is feeling the chill while being warmed by loose-leaf Earl Grey.  
  
There are things Arthur knows. He knows that Eames is a name given to an android by the being itself. He knows Eames’ model number, and he knows this particular unit’s serial number and production information. He knows Eames is, as he had said, special. Something sets Eames apart, and Arthur’s motivations for obtaining him yet remain his own, despite for all that Eames is apparently both a curious and cagey bastard of a robot.  
  
There are other things that Arthur thinks he knows. Like how he’d just shied internally at using the term _robot,_ as if it were offensive. To whom, he isn’t certain. He thinks he knows that Eames professes to enjoy tea, and that he appears to prefer his Earl Grey brewed non-traditionally—with too much sugar, no milk, and very black.  
  
Ariadne, Arthur thinks, should know better too. He appropriately chastises himself for this notion, is aware of it, and accepts it. He’s still coming to terms with the enormity of what he’s done, even if one of the—people—across from him don’t know it themselves.  
  
“Have you ever been to France?” Ariadne asks, easy as anything. As though Eames has traveled and seen and done, hasn’t come from a box like a product. In return, something in Eames’ eyes—softens, or Arthur thinks it does. Either way, the conversation from there is easier, and it’s almost as though Eames has taken a liking to Ariadne by the end of their little not-breakfast. He’s witty, he speaks softly, and he hasn’t let up with the accent. Ariadne certainly doesn’t seem to mind, and if he’s honest with himself, Arthur doesn’t either.  
  
\- -  
  
“I’d like to come over.”  
  
“Ariadne—”  
  
“I’d like to meet him, Arthur. I understand if you aren’t open to the idea, but I’d very much like to meet him.”  
  
Arthur had sighed, looking out at the overcast night sky. It was supposed to rain in the morning, and probably for a few solid days after that. Cold front or something. “If you like, and if you think it’s safe.”  
  
“I know you, Arthur. You wouldn’t even let me entertain the idea if you didn’t think it was safe.”  
  
“Just. Maybe use a different passport?”  
  
There was a pause. “Arthur. You of all people know that would potentially raise more flags than—has a week with him changed you already?”  
  
Arthur had been honest with himself. “I don’t know.”  
  
\- -  
  
A quick hop on a Trans-Atlantic shuttle sees Ariadne to Canadian soil, and Arthur’s humble little edifice that nestles among the rest of St. John’s climbing buildings. Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula has just enough historic value and little real importance to keep it from developing at the same speed as the rest of the civilized world, and more importantly out of view to prominent parties.  
  
Arthur embraces Ariadne when she arrives. Arthur doesn’t typically do hugs, but he hasn’t seen her since he’s moved, and a lot has happened. He lets her go, feels the smile stretching his face, and her eyes are soft, fond, and a little sad. Then Eames shuffles into view, wearing an old fuzzy shirt that is tight across his shoulders and baggy in the middle. It is gray with a wide neck, and doesn’t go with the bright orange flannel pants Eames is also wearing rather loudly, the drawstring unevenly tied.  
  
The combination of his walk, his clothes, and something about his face makes him just look—sleepy. Arthur thinks that maybe Eames charmed Ariadne long before she did the same in return.  
  
Now they’re sitting outside underneath the long overhang of Arthur’s porch, looking out into the misty garden and the buildings shrouded by rain and clouds. Arthur isn’t hungry, and Eames hasn’t said anything, and Ariadne says she’d eaten on the shuttle, so they drink tea and talk of France.

 

* * *

 

Arthur is on the phone, an archaic thing that used subnet connections and replaceable cards. He’s waiting for the call to be placed, and he doesn’t know Eames is watching. Or at least if he does, he hasn’t said anything about it.  
  
Eames has been doing this, lately—wandering around Arthur’s home, if that’s the right word, and exploring. Investigating. Eavesdropping, now and then. Eames hasn’t made a big deal of hiding his appearance or really going for intentional subtlety, but something about moving quietly, drifting from room to room like air feels right. So he does. He’s overheard Arthur muttering to himself as he watches over a pot on his gas cooktop; watched Arthur watch the skyline, hazy and warm-looking even though the temperature isn’t.  
  
Eames has sometimes just leaned against the open doorway, the big one that spans several metres and lets out onto Arthur’s rooftop vista. From there, Eames can go to the gardens, where he helps Arthur in the mornings and afternoons, or he can wander to the edge of the roof and look down, look at streets and shops and people. He can look up, see modest buildings, by modern standards, and watch a few cars speed between them through the mist.  
  
One of his favorite things to do is watch Arthur drink coffee and read. Arthur had gestured to his kettle one morning, and told Eames to have at it whenever he’d wanted. Eames made a new habit of warming water and brewing strong, black tea in the mornings, and then leaning against the threshold and watching Arthur. Before they worked in the gardens, Arthur would sit with his cup of coffee, sometimes a green tea, and he’d read—paper books, too. Eames finds something about it fascinating, though he isn’t sure it was the right word. It is another one of those things that causes sensations that are equally thrilling and somehow mundane within his body. The prevalent thought is _warm_ , and often it is accompanied by a strange tightness that is becoming familiar if no less identifiable. Eames idly wonders if humans feel things like this, and if they’re any more able to put names to such feelings.  
  
For now, though, he’s simply content to enjoy his tea, watch Arthur, and, on occasion, snoop.  
  
Arthur’s call connects—Eames can hear it from his shadowed vantage, but it’s more in the way Arthur straightens even as his shoulders appear to relax. “Hey, Mal.” Arthur’s voice is warm, and across the other end of the connection a French accent can be heard, though Eames can’t make out the words. He could, if he wanted to, but he chooses to listen in on only this side of the conversation. Eames doesn’t examine why.  
  
“No, I know. Yeah, Mal, I’m fine. So is he. He—he’s doing well.” There is a longer pause, and Eames once more takes in the view: Arthur, standing in front of his bedroom window that has a view of buildings, low lights, and fog. The room isn’t lit from within, just the bluish glow coming from outside. Arthur’s glass bookshelves catch some of the lights on passing cars as they float by, silent through the walls and tempered glass. “I...I’ve thought about it. I need to keep the net clear, you know that.”  
  
Arthur stops his pacing, and seems to listen intently, though his posture doesn’t tighten up too much. “It’s something I want to do, Mal—I thought I’d have to consider it more, or longer, maybe. But I’ve made the decision. It’s just when.”  
  
Eames started a bit when Arthur’s body language abruptly changed; he stood erect and every line in his body sang, somehow. Passion, anger, something that chased the blood from his knuckles and put steel in his spine. Eames blinked, and found his own rate of respiration had increased by a marked percentage.  
  
“No, Mal, how could—you _know better,_ I—” all at once, Arthur seemed to grow smaller, somehow. Like the air went out of him, the heat. His hand came up and he rubbed it over his face. Something in Eames—something inside, where the tightness was—fell.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Arthur says. “I...understand why you asked, but you of all people know what I’ve done to get here. To get him here. This, this is just the beginning, Mal. I’m not Ariadne, so don’t go getting any ideas, okay?” The strained lightness of Arthur’s voice makes Eames want to listen harder, to boost his aural input and hear what this French Mal is saying, but instead, he thinks perhaps it’s time to drift away and leave Arthur to his privacy.  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur breathes, “he really is.” He’s touching something on the shelf by his window.  
  
Eames leaves then. He knows a few more things, now, about Arthur. He knows that he is the subject of Arthur’s conversation with this Mal, and he knows Arthur was touching a memory control core on his shelves. It’s framed, suspended in glass. It’s the same model that Eames has inside his own body, somewhere. He doesn’t know the location—he’s got a block that prevents him from knowing, and he can’t even deduce the ‘negative space’ by knowing every centimetre of his body otherwise for a location.  
  
Eames puts it out of his mind, frustrated by what the chip represents and why Arthur has one on display, like it’s some kind of—trophy. But that isn’t right. Arthur isn’t—he’s different, he. He isn’t what Eames has heard in his dreams.  
  
Eames has read books. Arthur has a favorite, and it’s either ironic or just that, a favorite. _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ is one of Arthur’s standbys for misty mornings, but he seems to indulge in its worn pages especially when the sun is out. Eames read it—Arthur’s paper version—when Arthur was in the shower. He’d liked it.  
  
Eames does have dreams. Androids—at least, Eames’ model and a few other lines are capable of some kind of dream-state during sleep. It’s odd, especially in the newer lines that never need to rest. Eames’ line is a couple generations old, and he recharges every now and then, flushes his caches and organizes his memory. He likes to relive moments, sometimes, especially ones where he’s watched Arthur and Arthur doesn’t know Eames is doing it.  
  
Arthur making pasta is a favorite of his, even though Eames’ ‘cover’ was blown when Arthur had cursed when he’d touched his finger to the side of the hot pot on accident. Eames felt himself snort, surprised, and Arthur just shot him a rueful look before running his finger under the tap. Eames had come up to him, then, and taken over the spoon, stirring the pasta and getting some of the bits unstuck from the bottom of the pot.  
  
Eames was working at a stubborn piece when he realized Arthur had turned off the faucet and was just...watching him. That was when Eames had realized he was still smiling.  
  
Reliving the memory now, Eames experiences the same suffused warmth in his core, his chest. A slight flush to his cheeks. As far as human emotions and sensations went, he rather liked it, even his facsimile of it.

 

* * *

 

There is a different memory that is one of Eames’ most curious, and one he’s revisited confuses him, thrills him, somehow electrifies him even as he almost feels an approximation of shame for viewing it. For storing it and calling it up when he retreats to the room Arthur gave over to him for his own.  
  
If Eames wants, he can increase the gain on his sensory inputs. He can use his eyes to see the licence plates on distant cars, read advertisements on buildings through the hazy air. He can hear people—not clearly—on the streets far below them, listen to the wind as it blows through the tops of the buildings high above Arthur’s rooftop.  
  
Arthur doesn’t close his bedroom door, and his ensuite bath is connected by a simple open arch. Through it is Arthur’s modest shower. There’s a hall bath that has an antique clawfoot tub taking up most of its space, and Eames is curious enough about using it that he decides a hot bath, a cup of tea, and one of Arthur’s books is an experiment well-deserved.  
  
The bath water is comfortably hot, warming Eames to the joints of his servos. He suspends the analysis of his input for the moment, ignoring it as much as he can. Instead, he focuses on the way the heat in the water makes him _feel_ , how the tea is almost too hot to be drinking while he soaks. His feet feel especially nice, with his weight off of them. Eames lets his knees float, drops his left hand under the water. His eyes are closed, and he lets his right arm dangle over the side of the tub to keep the book safe. The pages are already slightly curled, wavy; it’s clear that Arthur has read it in the bath before himself.  
  
Arthur hasn’t used the tub lately that Eames knows of, sticking to his own shower instead. His shower that Eames can see if he stands in the hall, at an angle that provides a straight line of sight to the steamed glass and the body inside it.  
  
Eames had watched Arthur’s form, indistinct through the glass and water vapor. He had used infrared filters to penetrate the glass, and calibrated them for the steam. Still hazy but recognizable, Arthur’s hands had been up in his hair, his bent elbows making him look—adorably awkward. With all his reading, Eames was picking up adjectives. He was more than programmed to use them, it was just that since he’d taken to reading books, Arthur’s books, that he’d began using them to classify his pseudo-emotions.  
  
The heat signature of Arthur had rinsed the shampoo from his hair, had grasped the sponge (an actual sea sponge, Eames had later checked while taking a whiff of the shampoo) from its hanger. Eames watched Arthur apply body cleanser to the sponge, which showed cooler in his hand. Eames watched Arthur run the sponge over his body, scrubbing and reaching around his back to get at a difficult spot. It made Eames want to grin, Arthur all elbows once more.  
  
Then Arthur had rinsed the sponge, meticulous with it. He’d taken a few turns under the spray, getting the last of the suds off his heated body, and Eames couldn’t quite see them—infrared wasn’t especially detailed in hot environments. Eames zoomed in, quite a bit, and there—Arthur’s skin, water droplets and rivulets and bubbles, nearly gone now. Shades of orange, red, yellow tinges. Eames could view the image in black and white if he wanted, or reverse the spectrum, filter it for greater detail, but something about this, these evocative colors, he kept them.  
  
Arthur’s body was growing warmer, the water hotter. Eames let his aural sensors—his ears—take in the sound of falling water, his olfactory receptors unable to pick up the scent of hot water and warmed skin, residual soap and mint from Arthur’s favored body wash. Eames let himself imagine it, overlaid it on the picture before him. He felt almost overwhelmed by the sensory input he was receiving, even as he wanted more. It was like the first time his lips had touched a mug hot with tea—steaming, too warm against his skin, the burst of sugar and brewed leaves over his tongue, the warmth and smell of it in his nose.  
  
Eames realized that Arthur’s body _was_ increasing in temperature, and that currently his optics were focused on his chest, watching rivulets run across and around an erect nipple. Something about the sight made Eames capture it in a still, the almost pink-hot area raised and tightened, the skin around it smooth and wet, drops of water flash-frozen in their motion.  
  
Eames pulled his optics back, to take in the whole of Arthur’s body, and somewhere in background processes he registered his own mouth opening slightly, his breaths coming rather more difficult. He felt...intoxicated. Impossible and brilliant at the same time.  
  
Arthur’s heat signature was blurred, and Eames enhanced the image further—then dialed it back some. It was somehow more sensual this way, and that was how Eames wanted to absorb it even as he watched. Arthur’s hands weren’t soaping or scrubbing or rinsing. One was in his hair, but it wasn’t moving, just—the other, his other hand, Arthur was touching himself in a way that made Eames’ memory processes actually skip. He blinked and it had passed, but—  
  
Arthur’s length was in his palm, and he was moving both his arm and his hips, gently rolling into his own grip. Eames’ neck felt liquid as he tilted his head, watching. The image blurred where hand and cock met (Eames loved that word, and didn’t care why), Arthur stroking forward and back. He was drawing the act out, Eames realized, his breath harsh but just shy of panting. Eames listened to it over the sound of the water. He watched the indistinct image of Arthur’s fingers wrapped about his most intriguing bits, and saw how Arthur ran his other hand from his hair down his chest, down to frame his cock, to take over and let his formerly-occupied fingers splay against the wall.  
  
Eames watched him, and enjoyed it. He could catalogue moments, sharpen his view, or focus on a particular area, but instead he let his senses just flood with the image presented, basking in it like one of Arthur’s yet-to-bloom orchids turning towards the sun.  
  
Arthur’s hand left the wall, and he moved it behind himself. He was working himself faster, even as his fingers dipped between the cheeks of his pert little arse (Eames was rather fond of that bit and his chosen terminology, ever since he’d seen Arthur in well-fitted slacks). From what Eames could tell through the infrared image, Arthur was rubbing his fingers against himself, his hips pushing back, pushing forwards. Eames wondered what it felt like.  
  
Arthur’s body went some hybrid of liquid and rigid, and the hand on his cock stilled while the other pushed roughly in time with the thrusts of his hips. Eames watched his cock leap, his head go back then forward, his hair falling like water. His mouth was open and water poured from his chin, Eames mesmerized by it, by how the glow of his body intensified and then seemed to throb, pulsing gently down until his extremities visibly cooled while his core remained too-hot.  
  
It was only a few moments while Eames stood there, staring and unaccountably fixated, until Arthur seemed to come back to himself and hit the shutoff for the water. Eames started, and he retreated as stealthily as possible from the hallway, already wanting to relive what he’d just seen than simply process it.  
  
Now, Eames finishes reliving this particular memory, his body hot from the bath, the scent of tea and damp book pages in his nose. It’s not an unpleasant combination, and Eames’ lips are positioned in a tiny smile as the images play out in his mind.  
  
Eames opens his eyes, and the sight of his own hard cock, rising out of the bathwater, greets him.  
  
Eames stares at his own member for a long moment. It’s certainly the most superfluous appendage he has, and not one he’s explored since his awakening. He’s become familiar with its basic use, as he drinks a lot of tea and his body doesn’t need to process it all, but he’s never—  
  
Eames is sexually functional, to an extent. He’s designed that way. He’s just never experienced true desire, nor has he felt genuine carnal urges. He is programmed to respond to the sexual requirements of his human owner, if need be, and in theory he’s designed to...feel, perhaps.  
  
Curiously, Eames gently puts his hand to his own cock, wrapping his fingers about himself. It’s warm, and soft, and hard, all at once. His hand feels nice upon it, though he isn’t moving it yet. His foreskin covers the head of his cock, and as Eames slowly pulls his hand down, watching it recede, he decides he likes thinking of his own member as a “cock.” It really is one of his new favorite words.  
  
The sensation of the skin moving over the shaft and his own hand against the flesh is pleasant. Warm is still the prevalent sensation, so Eames tightens his grip a bit. Abruptly, he remembers what triggered his otherwise inexplicable erection, and Eames wonders if he can do with it what Arthur has done to himself.  
  
All at once, Eames’ hips roll of their own accord, his hand tightening, and he gasps aloud.  
  
He’s programmed for—this?  
  
The sensation, the _feeling,_ is unexpected, novel, frightening, and beautiful. Never would he have thought he’d be able to participate in such an act and feel even an approximation of what humans—what _Arthur_ must feel.  
  
Eames wants to watch, but instead he closes his eyes, lets his head fall back to rest on the edge of the tub, and grips the side of it for balance as he moves his hand over his cock, letting his hips move as though through instinct that he doesn’t possess. His mouth is open, and his respiration is greatly increased though shallower. His heart beats hard in his chest so he can feel it, and Eames just wallows in the sensory input that is making his body go haywire.  
  
Eames opens his eyes, because he wants to watch. His cock is producing some clear liquid, and he coaxes more from himself as he strokes. He slows his hand and loosens his grip a little, moving it with more purpose than before, paying attention to how he can move his skin over his cock. It’s a fascinating appendage, really.  
  
He lets go of the tub with this other hand and touches a fingertip to the slit at the tip of his cock. The liquid is a little more viscous than water, and disappointingly tasteless when Eames samples it. He idly leaves his finger touching his bottom lip, not really thinking about it, just watching. Oddly, he’s almost bored for a moment. He remembers Arthur using both of his hands, and once again the image, the thought of Arthur has his cock moving in his hand on its own.  
  
Eames squeezes himself, and shivers. He brings his other hand down between his legs, and his wrist brushes his balls. That sensation is curious too, but he focuses instead on touching his own arse with the pads of his fingers. That, indeed, is odd, and not what he would call comfortable or even stimulating. Still, he thinks of Arthur doing it, and he presses.  
  
Still odd. Eames’ eyes close, a small line appearing between his brows, and he points his finger more, attempts to push it within his body. He gasps and pulls his hand away, because it—it had hurt.  
  
Blinking, Eames is at least pleased his erection hasn’t wilted, though truth be told he’s still unsure of the mechanics. He hadn’t exactly found his own documentation scintillating, certainly not in comparison to Arthur’s books.  
  
Something in him niggles at that, like a memory he can’t quite access. It’s like data that wasn’t completely wiped, almost—stray ones and zeroes floating in senseless order.  
  
Unbidden that brings the image of ones and zeroes coming out of his cock, and Eames startles himself with a laugh. He pushes the stray thought out of his mind and instead inhales deeply, reacquainting himself with the sensations of warmth, of his hand on his cock, of the memory of Arthur doing this to himself.  
  
He begins stroking again, and a shudder moves through his body. This feels—it feels rather _good._  
  
What was Arthur thinking, Eames wonders, in the shower? Is that how he’s supposed to do this? Eames thinks of Arthur’s smile, the dimples that appear in his cheeks when he does. That doesn’t seem to do much for the sensations below his waist, but it does bring about the warm-chest-tightening feeling. Eames thinks about Arthur’s arse in his slacks, about his fingers between his cheeks, about his flushed skin and how his hair had fallen wet around his face when he’d reached completion.  
  
Eames groans, and his eyes shoot open as he hears how loud he is. He’s panting now, and his hand is moving faster of its own volition. Eames watches the skin of his cock, the flesh between his fingers, and thinks, _This is the most real part of myself I have, here in my hand._  
  
Eames’ hips begin to move more ardently, and water sloshes in the tub. Eames grunts, feels his toes curling, a dozen sudden odd sensations that make no sense either biologically or—  
  
Eames’ eyes squinch shut hard and he feels his body clench, his cock stiffen further and seem to arch towards his body. Heat rips through him as pulsations travel from his balls and spine up his cock. It’s strange, it’s not what he’d call sexy, and it’s incredible.  
  
Eames lies panting in the bath for some moments, waiting for the rushing throughout his body, which seems to be equal sensation and sound, to slow, for his heart and breathing to equalize. Eames realizes quickly that he’s got a death grip upon his member, and he loosens his fingers. He’s issued thicker fluid, an artificial approximation of semen, into the water, onto his chest. He lets go his cock and lets his hand sink into the water, looking at the fluid. He tests it with his other hand, what’s left of it on his chest—the rest remains in the water, not dissipating like Eames expected it to.  
  
It has an interesting consistency, uniform. It is also tasteless, as the quick touch of his tongue to a fingertip attests. Eames gathers the rest on his fingers, and then in another bout of—not instinct, but something—he reaches down underneath himself once more, brushing his balls, and touches his arsehole.  
  
His balls are sensitive, as is the skin behind them. Eames draws a knee up, and carefully presses around his arse, more gentle but less tentative this time. The ‘semen’ remains slick in the water, and Eames has to wonder if it was intended to be that way. The urgency he felt earlier is gone, quick as escaping steam, but the memory of Arthur is enough to make him want to see if he can get a reaction out of his body in this, too.  
  
It isn’t...exactly what he expected, given that he isn’t sure what to expect. Eames decides to just play around, a bit, and see where things go, as it were. He runs the pad of his finger over himself, then experiments with using a little pressure. That feels—different. He gives himself a flick, and laughs even as he flinches away. Not quite so aggressive, then, perhaps—  
  
He gently insinuates the very tip of his finger into the center of his arse, and kind of...tugs, in different directions. It’s interesting if nothing else. He well knows he has nerve receptors in this region of his body, much the same way humans do, especially in light of his sexual functionality. He’s just not entirely certain how they work for this type of—self-pleasure.  
  
It hits Eames then, that he’s just successfully masturbated to orgasm for the first time. It makes him feel oddly giddy. He presses with his finger, and all at once it slides inside his body to his second knuckle. He gasps and arches, feeling his arse clench hard around his finger. This—this feels unexpectedly—  
  
It is good, and it isn’t. It’s odd and different and—Eames crooks his finger. The inside of his arse is the furthest thing from sexual, at least upon initial impression, but it’s more how his arse feels about his finger. He attempts to pull his finger back a little and push inside, but that sensation isn’t very pleasant. Instead of focusing on his finger, he experimentally clenches the muscles of his arse about it, and the sound that comes from his throat this time is a breathy moan.  
  
Try as he might, he can’t duplicate the sensation, and he shortly grows disappointed. His cock shows no interest in the proceedings, though his balls feel pleasantly warm and heavy. He ceases his explorations, and drains the water. He scrubs at his body as the water goes down the drain, augmenting it with fresh flow from the tap to get the soap off his body.  
  
All in all, Eames finds this particular pursuit rather educational, and vows to do his best to ‘learn’ more as time goes on. Should he espy Arthur in such a situation in the future, well. Research, and all that.

 

* * *

 

"Why my lady Ariadne," Eames said, pleased. "No, I've been watching lots of telly, actually. It's quite boring except for this particular series I seem to have become attached to." Eames idly wandered the gardens. "It has plenty of wizardry and things, it's engrossing.  
  
"Well, it's also sort of dreadfully boring at times, and hush, I am _not_ playing up the accent or the idioms for you. Well, perhaps a little. You like it, love, don't try to tell me otherwise. Have you any recommendations yourself? Arthur's library is quite well-stocked."  
  
Eames enjoys his conversations with Ariadne. He suspects they're over some sort of secured subnetwork that Arthur has decided to let Eames use. At least, Eames assumes Arthur has given his tacit permission, otherwise it wouldn't have been so easy to break into.  
  
Eames doesn't know why Arthur's off the grid the way he is, but human intuition or not he knows when not to ask.  
  
"Doctor what?" He says, just to tease Ariadne. Predictably she laughs at him, wise to his ways, and says she'll convince Arthur to host a marathon involving the tenth iteration of some time-traveling doctor or other.  
  
"No, I'll be careful to never bring that up," Eames says sagely. "I haven't seen even the original, so I've no preference yet for a particular Doctor, but far be it from me to impugn Arthur's favorite."  
  
Eames enjoys listening to Ariadne laugh. It's a pretty sound, not perfect, and rather human. In fact, Eames is fond of Ariadne, if he's honest with himself. It's easy to grow fond of someone, he's grown to realize, and that makes him happy.  
  
It's not quite the chest-tightening floaty-feeling he experiences at times with Arthur, which he still doesn't understand, but it's nice, and something he's decided to identify and call happiness, of a sort.  
  
"I'm thinking tacos tonight," Arthur says, walking into the area that Eames has slowly come to think of as his own. He doesn't acknowledge that Eames is using his archaic phone without permission over one of his hidden tight-beam connections. He just carries in paper bags of fresh groceries, a head of cabbage precariously tilting out of the top, and presumably ends up in the kitchen.  
  
"I've got to run, love," Eames says, unsure if he's in trouble or not, but feeling okay about it in general. "I'll ring you later?" He laughs. "Yes, if Arthur hasn't decided to have me recycled for scrap. I'll tell him. You too, love, ta."  
  
He closes Arthur's little flip and holds it loosely in his hand as he wanders through to the kitchen area, Arthur already having mostly unpacked. He's efficient, though it is kind of strange that the cabbage was on top of the bag like that. Perhaps, Eames thinks, it's a human thing.  
  
\- -  
  
"Can we watch movies?"  
  
Eames is helping Arthur shred lettuce and mix cheeses for the tacos. Arthur has made just about everything from scratch, or at least that is to say without using some form of pre-mixed seasoning. He didn't make the corn tortillas, but they're fresh from a lady who brings them to Arthur's favorite market. They fill the area with a distinctive scent as they fry, and both Arthur and Eames have tiny burns on their forearms from popping oil.  
  
“Anything in particular in mind?” Arthur is scooping in the meat now, and Eames passes him tongs to fry the tacos with. He tells Arthur about Ariadne’s recommendations, and the way Arthur lights up about this Doctor Who business is enough to make Eames’ decision for him.  
  
They eat greasy, messy tacos with too much tomato sauce while watching two-thirds of a season in one go, and when Arthur finally yawns himself to bed Eames is tempted to stay up and marathon the rest, like Arthur said he could. He’s got plenty of time before recharging is really necessary, and he still needs to clean up the kitchen.  
  
Eames thinks of Arthur’s face, the way he watched something he’s probably seen a hundred times with the enthusiasm that says it’s an old favorite that won’t ever get old, not for him.  
  
Eames smiles to himself, and shuts down the media center despite Arthur’s offer and heads into the kitchen to clean up.  
  
\- -  
  
Eames is making similar tacos only two nights later, trying to make them like Arthur's but not using his innate ability to mimic them exactly, instead letting them be imperfect. The ingredients were there (after he went to the market, just down the street) and Arthur did say he could use the kitchen. Eames isn’t necessarily expecting Arthur to leap up and down in happiness for repeat tacos so soon, but he is hopeful about watching more movies. He hasn’t called Ariadne again, because while Arthur never said anything about it before he feels kind of guilty about it.  
  
Eames certainly isn’t expecting Arthur to come home from wherever he was, make it through to the kitchen, and stare at Eames while he fries shells. His face is pale.  
  
Eames’ heart thuds somewhat hard in his chest, and his hand nearly fumbles the tongs. He realizes he feels caught. Carefully, he turns down the flame on Arthur’s cooktop and prepares to move the pan, but Arthur moves forward decisively and says, “Don’t, you’ll never get the oil back to the right temperature.”  
  
Eames swallows, but he continues to fry while not looking at Arthur. “Ah. I was. We could perhaps watch more movies, tonight, if you wanted. If you aren’t—if that’s all right.”  
  
“You went to the market,” Arthur says. It’s not accusatory, not angry, just factual. Eames purses his lips, and he nods.  
  
“Am I not to go out?” he asks, quietly. Arthur begins shredding lettuce and cabbage, using the rest of the head from the time before.  
  
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Arthur says equally softly. “It’s—I’d just rather you didn’t.”  
  
Eames doesn’t look at him then, though he wants to. It isn’t like Arthur to trip over his words or sound less than confident while speaking.  
  
Eames bites his lip, and something small revels in the feeling of his teeth on his skin while the rest of him feels...butterflies. “I’m nervous,” he says.  
  
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Arthur replies, but he doesn’t explain or say anything to soothe Eames’ synthetic nerves. Neither of them speak for a while, only the sounds of distant cars and hot frying oil in the kitchen area.  
  
“It was nice,” Eames says after a while, setting the last of the shells to drain and rest in a towel-lined colander. “I thought that the market wasn’t far, and we still had tortillas, so.”  
  
“What movie did you have in mind?” Arthur says, cutting tomatoes. “Would you like to watch the rest of Doctor Who?”  
  
Eames breathes out. “Yes,” he says.  
  
They’ve managed to put away the entire season this time, and even with bellies full of tacos (a truly novel sensation, one Eames thoroughly enjoys while it makes him feel rather ‘round’) they aren’t sleepy. Rather, Arthur isn’t. Eames had plugged in the night before, and it was on his fresh energy high that he’d decided on his market jaunt.  
  
“So,” Eames says to break the silence of the credits. “How were the tacos?”  
  
Arthur grins easily. “You ask now? Did you see my total lack of manners in eating them?”  
  
Eames smiles, pleased. “Well. Thought I would ask. I didn’t make them like you did.”  
  
Arthur shrugs, reaching for the remote, and grasping at his own belly while doing it. It’s endearing. “That’s what made them good,” he says. “It’s nice that you made them by imitation, by what you learned.”  
  
Eames tries not to look smug, but then he doesn’t try _too_ hard. “Well,” he says, and Arthur nudges him with the remote.  
  
It’s another piece of Arthur’s archaic tech, something not activated by voice or floating haptic interface. Eames suspects it has something to do with Arthur being the secretive hermit that he is, but it doesn’t bother him.  
  
“So I’m curious,” Eames says. Arthur grunts, his eyes closed as he presumably works at digesting his food. Before Eames can continue, Arthur says, “That’s good.”  
  
“...what?”  
  
“That you’re curious.”  
  
Eames’ brows do something on his forehead he can’t see, but he knows when he’s confused. Arthur doesn’t elaborate, so Eames goes back to his query. “Ariadne was rather adamant that I not miss a particular film, she—”  
  
“Did she.” Arthur doesn’t ask it, and he runs his hand down over his face. Eames feels suddenly awkward, like he’s said or done something he shouldn’t have. Arthur seems to realize this, and he blinks his eyes open. “Did you know you were supposed to be a soldier?” he says, apropos of nothing whatsoever.  
  
Eames blinks. “Um.”  
  
“You can make perfect tacos or mimic the way I like my coffee, but you were intended to see the battlefield,” Arthur says. “Your line was originally military, with components that weren’t really advanced so much as tried-and-true. You—they were designed as a special unit, supposed to be able to—the line was scrapped. There was a problem, with the military application, so they decided to convert them into domestic models instead.”  
  
Eames watches Arthur, and has no reply for him. Something’s niggling at him again, but he has no idea what it is.  
  
“You didn’t have that face,” Arthur says, like he’s finishing something.  
  
“I’m sorry?”  
  
Arthur finally looks at him, like he’s actually conversing with him rather than talking to the room at large. “Your build, your physique,” Arthur says, “was originally designed for strength, speed, and agility. They mostly kept that, but your face was much more generic. When they—it was decided you’d be a domestic android rather than a military one, they gave you a face.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Arthur, but this conversation is making me feel oddly awkward, and I don’t know what to say.”  
  
“They chose to give you a face modeled off of a twenty-first century actor. To make you appealing, I guess, to civilians. For domestic—he’s, uh.”  
  
Eames stares. He’s pretty sure he’s never heard Arthur say ‘uh’ before. The man in question rubs the back of his neck, and looks up at him almost—sheepishly. “He is pretty attractive, and I might have all of his movies.”  
  
Realization dawns, and Eames out-and-out laughs. “So that’s what milady Ariadne was getting on about.”  
  
Arthur rolls his eyes. “Maybe.”  
  
Eames is still grinning. “Let’s watch one.” Arthur grunts, but puffs out his air like it’s inevitable that they will. “Do you want to see what you’d look like in a uniform?”  
  
Eames makes a face. “Because _that_ isn’t weird.” If he isn’t mistaken, Arthur is blushing.  
  
“Shut up, I just mean—as a soldier, kind of.” Eames nods, feeling like he should let Arthur off the hook, or something, and sure enough Arthur seems relieved. “ _Colditz_ , then,” he says.  
  
Eames blinks. “Castle. German. World War II, used as a POW camp by the Nazis.”  
  
Arthur is staring at him. “You do actually want to _watch_ the movie, right?”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
\- -  
  
In truth, Eames isn’t sure he does want to see what...his face looks like on somebody else. Somebody from decades past, a real person, with the face Eames is wearing. But maybe it’s not the same, maybe they just—  
  
It’s the same, it’s so bloody exact, and to see someone, a _real person_ move and speak and _act_ with his face, to _be,_ it’s exhilarating for several moments. Then it—Eames is disturbed, almost. He sees mannerisms in the actor that he himself has adopted, but he’s never seen these movies before, he never knew this man, this man who has his face, existed in the past. That, there—the way he holds his shoulders, a purse of the lips (does his mouth really look like that?), how he looks at people from somewhere deep inside himself...  
  
 _How much is me?_  
  
The movie is a good one, and Eames does like it. He likes the story, recognizes the layers of the plot and how every character evolves and plays their part, even if he finds he doesn’t like some of them. He’s rather happy that ‘his’ actor makes it out in the end, though not a little miffed that that Irish bastard got to his girl. He doesn’t analyze the feelings too much, instead basking in them and appreciating them for what they are, silly surface human things.  
  
But when the movie is done, Eames looks over at Arthur. Arthur isn’t looking at him, and it’s like he’s embarrassed. They retire to their rooms for the night without exchanging another word, though Arthur cleans up the kitchen this time.

 

* * *

  

Eames is inhaling the steam from his tea the next morning, leaning against his customary spot watching Arthur do the same with his coffee. He’s more aware, now, of how he holds himself, of the particular set of his shoulders or his head and neck. He thinks about cutting his hair. He thinks about his perfectly straight teeth.  
  
“How much is me?” he asks, inhaling and looking out at the sun through the mist, over Arthur’s head.  
  
“It’s all you, Eames,” Arthur says quietly.  
  
“Is it.” Something in Eames’ tone makes his own belly twist as he recognizes it from the movie they watched last night.  
  
“You’re designed off of a template,” Arthur continues, voice even, honest. “Generations before you, innovations, breakthroughs. Old tech and new. You do have a basic foundation that your personality comes from, but that, it’s all you.”  
  
“Right. The way I walk, how I sometimes scratch at one ear, my enunciation. All of it, me.” Eames’ voice is flat, and Arthur looks up at him.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, “don’t forget that we use DNA synthesis to create your organic components and lay down said foundation, Eames. From what I understand, your body actually carries some copy of that DNA’s particular configuration, or elements thereof, however replicated they are.”  
  
Eames makes another face. That is _beyond_... “Still,” Eames huffs, and recognizes that crossing his arms and slouching would make him seem childish. It doesn't stop him from wanting to do it. "...I'm a bit bloody put out that I decided on this British accent and affectations like I was being clever or something."  
  
Arthur snorts, but sobers quickly. "There's no way to know that," he says, quietly. Eames frowns.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
Arthur shrugs easily. "We can design a thinking android. One that responds to programming, that makes decisions based upon sets of rules, but also one that responds to its synthetic DNA. Subconscious ideas, thoughts, impulses—we don't understand those in the human mind. The synthetic mind is a model off of our own, with the requisite artificial components. But the way you think—"  
  
Arthur is still talking, but something in Eames' mind shifts hard, and he hears a voice in his head, and it—  
  
 _You're not supposed to_ think.  
  
It sounds like Arthur.  
  
"—it isn't something we can measure, that we can predict. You think like anybody else does and you don't. You're your own man, as it were. You like tea, and a particular blend, a specific brew, sugar—that’s you." Arthur's looking at him, like he's realized for a moment that Eames wasn't with him. "Eames?"  
  
It took less than a second, but no more than now is Eames surer that he’s heard Arthur's voice in his dreams.  
  
"Can I dream?" he asks bluntly, and Arthur hears something in his voice, he must, because his shoulders come up a bit. Eames feels...like he's shaking, but on the inside, and he feels hot. Sick.  
  
Arthur blinks once, but holds his eyes. "They’ve measured REM sleep and the same type of waves that occur—.” Arthur looks away for a moment. “Androids have been able to dream for some time now, Eames."  
  
Rationally, Eames knows that hearing Arthur's voice in his head in association with what he's termed nightmares can be a fabrication. It could be his mind mimicking the human need to make connections where there shouldn't be.  
  
Irrationally, Eames thinks that his dreams—his memories—are true, and he's bloody angry.  
  
"You son of a bitch," he murmurs quietly, and somewhere, in the back of his mind mingled with processes that tell him the ambient temperature around his body has risen and that the glands in his skin have begun to synthesize sweat, he realizes he's channeling genuine human emotion and it would be interesting if he weren't _so fucking angry._  
  
It's a dull roar in the back of his mind, memories like a flood, of the pain of a split lip and the taste of his own—it wasn't blood, and Arthur's voice, _Stop it, he doesn't_ understand, _stop._  
  
“You,” he says, and his voice is shaking with it, _”I know you.”_  
  
Eames’ system is flooding with a derivative of adrenaline, while his heart beats double-time to circulate coolant, so much that he can feel the rush.  
  
He can’t call up the memory. There’s something there, a block. He can feel it—not a blankness where something was, but an opacity where it should be, hiding it from all sides, no matter how he approaches it. Somewhere, at the beginning—no, before the beginning, _his_ beginning. He can’t read it, but he can bloody well _feel_ it, human emotions pure and like nothing he’s felt since for their saturation through his very existence. Pain, confusion, fear.  
  
Though he can’t recall it, Eames knows for certain Arthur was there, and meeting him, their first conversation that he can remember makes a little more sense.  
  
“Who are you, Arthur? What did you do to me?”  
  
Arthur blinks, and his mouth is a flat line saying nothing. He sort of shakes his head, an aborted motion. “I didn’t.”  
  
“Don’t fucking lie to me, Arthur,” Eames hisses, his voice a low snarl that frightens him for all that it sounds controlled. He feels afraid, angry, shaky—ready. Bloody soldier, indeed.  
  
“You were marked, they—I.” Arthur blinks, twice. “Fuck,” he says, still looking at Eames. For all the tension, he meets Eames’ eyes, and amidst all the adrenaline and anger Eames’ chest is tight again, like it wasn’t already hard to breathe. And then Arthur steps up to him, takes a few paces and gets right up into his space so they’re sharing thinned air.  
  
“They were going to destroy you,” Arthur says. “You were marked for wiping and recycling. You were deemed too dangerous for release, especially if you replicated. You represent dangerous ideas, Eames. They wanted you erased because you were _’special.’_ So I took you. You’re here now, still you, thinking, living and breathing.”  
  
“Still bloody me?” Eames says, even though he hears Arthur’s words, and tries to process them and he _can’t._ “How am I _me_ , how can—I don’t even _want_ to start any trouble, I don’t know bloody how, I just want to. I want.” Eames stops, his chest is too tight, he can’t breathe. “I want to just be me, to be alive. That’s a bloody crime, now, is it?”  
  
Arthur’s breathing fast, too. “You know it is, Eames,” he says. His cheeks are a little blotchy and the rest of his face is pale. His eyes are vivid, for all that they’re brown. He’s beautiful.  
  
“You are alive, Eames. I didn’t accept that myself, but I know it. You make your own decisions, I don’t control you. Nobody does.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Eames says. “I’m a fucking robot with illusions of control over my own processes, wallowing in bloody existential angst while you’re the one with all the cards.” Eames narrows his eyes. “Aren’t you, Arthur? I mean, how can I even entertain the desire for this ‘freedom’ that we both know is an illusion?”  
  
There’s a long moment between them, silent but not. Cars outside, wind. A bird that calls somewhere in the garden. The ticking of Arthur’s ancient fridge, the sounds of their breaths. “You are free, Eames,” Arthur says, quietly.  
  
Eames snorts. "Oh, please, do enlighten the poor little android."  
  
"Eames," Arthur says. "Don't pick up that plant."  
  
Eames follows Arthur's gaze, even as he glances back at the man as though he's crazy. The tiny neanthe bella palm, one of Arthur's prized favorites, sits innocently in its little pot on a small table. Eames hasn't touched it, not once, because he knows how Arthur feels about it. Now, he reaches for it, and picks it up in his hand.  
  
It is so small, fragile, and he can crush it. Crush the pot, empty the soil, expose the roots to air. The shock alone may be enough to kill the little plant, already two years old.  
  
Eames stares at Arthur, who is looking at how carefully Eames holds the tiny pot. Blinking once, Eames sets it back down.  
  
"Eames," Arthur says. "Don't scratch your nose."  
  
This time, Eames' mouth twists, but he scratches his nose. It's half-hearted, because Arthur has apparently made his point.  
  
"I. I don't understand."  
  
Arthur tilts his head—just a little, in that way he has—and says, "That control chip is yours."  
  
Eames stares, thinking about the little glassed-in piece of silicone and plastic, designed to interface with his hardware and wetware, and influence his software—his being.  
  
"Why?"  
  
Arthur's struggling with something, and Eames gets the feeling it's something he's been fighting with for longer than Eames has been aware. Finally, Arthur licks his lips and pushes air out through his nose. He meets Eames' eyes directly. "You deserved better," he says.  
  
Eames feels the need to swallow, and can't. He runs a background diagnostic and wonders why these imperfect organic components are so prone to—  
  
"I." Eames doesn't know what to say, so he says instead, “You should grow your hair.”  
  
Arthur’s hair is short, and it had been almost shorn on the sides when Eames had first come to his home, the scalp pale. A recent cut.  
  
Arthur is still looking at him, maybe even staring, and Eames feels heat rush up underneath his skin. Arthur is looking at him, Eames knows it, knows that Arthur can see the flush staining his cheeks.  
  
Arthur's eyes move, finally, darting about his face, and something in Eames loosens. "Don't watch me in the shower anymore, asshole," he mutters as he walks away.  
  
It's a full-on blush, now. Eames' mouth is unfortunately faster than his brain, which is still processing Arthur's words. "If you would just extend an _invit_ —"  
  
He stands there, blinking, and his jaw works. He doesn't know what he just did, how to take it back, why he said it in the first place. Arthur stops and turns back to him, his profile so familiar it stirs something within Eames. He's not _attracted_ to Arthur, he's not. He could be, maybe, given time, and that's kind of frightening.  
  
Arthur moves his jaw, looking at him, then looking to the side a little, muscles jumping in his face. The masseter muscle clenching lightly, causing the temporalis to shift. Arthur's orbicularis oculi tensing slightly, crow's feet appearing at his eyes.  
  
His eyes, Eames thinks, are probably one of his favorite things about Arthur. They look so young and aged at the same time.  
  
"I don't think so, Eames."  
  
"I'm sorry I said it," Eames says. There’s a longish moment of silence that feels rather awkward. “Can we. Ah. Can we have leftovers tonight?” Eames asks. He doesn’t feel like cooking, and too late he thinks that Arthur might interpret this as Eames wanting to watch another movie.  
  
Arthur swallows, once. He nods. He's not avoiding Eames' eyes, and it's a struggle but Eames meets his until Arthur lets out a decisive breath and leaves the area. Eames doesn’t think they’ll be watching anything tonight.  
  
Eames lets out his own breath approximately two minutes later, oddly conscious of his heartbeat, flushing coolant and nanites through his body in conduits and venous networks. He swallows, too, and just leans up against the wall, contemplating a cup of Twining’s English Afternoon and how good it would taste with extra sugar.  
  
\- -  
  
The next morning, Eames' teeth are crooked.  
  
They didn't make him _exactly_ like their pretty actor. Eames was designed to look good, and they made it so.  
  
Eames isn't sure if matching his dental configuration to that of his template was the right way to go—was it truly hypocritical? Did he just feed into his own fears?—perhaps he's fooling himself into some sort of homage, his little grasp for humanity in imperfection.  
  
Perhaps it doesn't matter at all. Nobody else is going to notice, nobody that he knows. He only has two people, two that know him and whom he likes.  
  
Eames puts his teeth out of his mind, and sets about brewing his morning tea. He and Arthur are due to work on the orchids again today, and Eames has been hoping to see them bloom. One has been close, so close Eames swears he can feel it, and it's somehow gratifying that Arthur shares the anticipation, that Eames feels it in the first place. It's like the feeling is verified, it's something easy and true and real.  
  
Arthur finishes his coffee and Eames finds himself hiding his mouth in his cup, avoiding Arthur's gaze. He wonders, now, what he looks like. His new self-consciousness dogs him when they head to the greenhouse to tend the orchids. Eames wonders if what he does is acting, pretending to be human, when he flicks at an itchy spot behind his neck, or purses his lips while he worries a tangle out of the twine securing a moss ball.  
  
They're halfway done with the greenhouse when Eames spots it, so tiny that he and Arthur both had missed it initially. It's white, still semi-furled, but the beginnings of its twin tails are breathtakingly beautiful.  
  
Sensing Eames' discovery, Arthur is at his side in a moment, and unthinkingly Eames smiles.  
  
Arthur's dimpling to match him, and when they turn to one another his eyes fall and catch on Eames' teeth.  
  
Suddenly unsure, Eames' smile dims and he closes his mouth, licking his lips. He's frustrated when he remembers that it's a mannerism he's copying subconsciously, ingrained in his programming.  
  
"Your teeth are crooked," Arthur says, and the words are simple, like he'd said 'the orchid is blooming.'  
  
Eames doesn't know what to say, so he looks up at Arthur from under his eyelashes and shrugs.  
  
Half of Arthur's face pulls into a grin, and the other half follows it into a real smile, dimples and all. "It's you," he says.  
  
They continue to tend to the orchids, and every time Eames' eyes stray back to their single new bloom, he smiles at it.  
  
Across the green spears of the yet-to-bloom plants, he feels Arthur looking at him, and he's smiling, too.  
  
\- -  
  
Eames is in the middle of telling Arthur to raise the right end more, as the picture’s still uneven—when he gets a truly strange feeling in his belly, and then suddenly, he. He flatulates. Loudly.  
  
Arthur almost drops the picture, and he’s turned around holding the frame with his weight leaning all on one hand, open-mouthed.  
  
No one is more surprised than Eames, but he takes in Arthur’s head-full-of-eyeballs face and opens his mouth. “Well don’t bloody _look_ at me like that,” he says, indignant. “We added the bloody cabbage to the bloody tacos, didn’t we?”  
  
Arthur’s laughing. No, he’s—he’s howling, like a bloody hyena. Like a prat. Like a foolish twat, is what he bloody is, and he only laughs harder and his face only gets redder as Eames realizes he’s saying this aloud.  
  
“Bugger this,” Eames mutters, “and bugger your picture. I’m—I’m off to.” He doesn’t finish, gesturing vaguely at his area of the flat and its bathroom.  
  
Arthur flaps a hand at him, coughing and still kind of laughing. Eames thinks there might be tears streaking his ruddy cheeks, the bastard.  
  
“I’m taking one of your bloody books with me, you arsehole,” he says, and Arthur just laughs some more.  
  
\- -  
  
“...you didn’t tell me that about the tacos,” Eames says. They’re in Arthur’s garden proper, surrounded by pots and raised beds and greenery of every shade, though with a particular bent towards ferns and tropical plants. It’s a pleasing dichotomy, with some splashes of primrose or hibiscus here and there for color.  
  
It’s a humid day, and it feels glorious on Eames’ synthetic skin, like it’s drinking up the moisture. “I didn’t know you could do that,” Arthur says, and Eames thinks he’s hiding a smile as he bends to his work.  
  
“Pfft,” Eames says. “Bloody hell you didn’t.”  
  
“No, seriously,” Arthur says, and yes, the twat is smiling. “I mean, you process food and drink, right, and what your systems can’t break down either organically or synthetically and use, well, it’s gotta go somewhere.”  
  
“Fucking tacos,” Eames says, and it’s the first time he’s used that particular epithet aloud. It’s kind of fun, and he enjoys the sound Arthur makes when he snorts. It’s weird and he likes it.  
  
He remembers Arthur’s red-faced laughter, blotchy cheeks and streaming eyes and wheezing hyena-noises that weren’t at all attractive, and how he was beautiful in that moment. Eames wants to make him laugh like that again. He wants to laugh like that, to find something so ridiculous that isn’t really funny but hits him in the gut somewhere, that just makes him—  
  
Hits him. In the gut.  
  
Before Eames realizes it, he’s laughing. It’s a giggle, at first, a feeling he can physically identify as mirth tickling his insides, and then he’s kind of snorting and chuckling, then he’s laughing like a loon. A literal insane person, he’s just—he can’t stop, and Arthur is _looking_ at him like he’s lost his electronic marbles.  
  
Eames sits down hard on his arse, clutching his trowel in his hand, and with the back of the other, soil-stained, he wipes at his cheeks, careful of his eyes. He winds down soon enough, and for the oddest moment his eyes sting with the overflow of genuine emotion. He looks up at Arthur, and he feels so _good._  
  
Arthur’s still looking at him odd, but his eyes have gone soft, like he’s watching something precious. It makes Eames want to snort again, but instead his chest goes all tight like it does.  
  
Arthur scrapes his upper lip with his teeth, a small smile making his dimples come out. “You’re gonna have to share,” he says. Eames explains it as best he can, how he liked Arthur’s display of human emotion, how he desired it for himself, and how he innocuously arrived at his own spate of laughter. “Silly, innit?” he says, when they’ve comfortably gone back to working and talking.  
  
Arthur pats down some fresh soil around the base of a variegated _Chlorophytum comosum_ , one of many plantlets taken off of a mother plant clear across the roof. Said mother plant is largely proportioned, and many babies descend from her leaves on long stalks. Eames immediately understands why it’s called a spider plant. Eames forms a new habit of greeting it when he walks by, which seems to amuse Arthur to no end—especially when Eames addresses the babies directly.  
  
Eames himself is frowning at the _Primula veris_ , which is badly wilting. “Arthur,” he calls, and shows him the leaves. They appear burnt in places, yellow-brown and limp in others. There’s a telltale white on the edges of one of the plant’s leaves. “Fungus?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur says, frowning. “I’ve been thinking about pruning the dead stuff and deadheading the bad blooms, but I didn’t want to add any more stress to the plant.”  
  
“Guess our decision’s been made for us,” Eames says gravely. Arthur sighs and nods in the corner of his vision. They wield their shears and go about their task in silence, the mood somewhat serious. Eames finds he doesn’t want these plants to die, and he feels that it isn’t just because they’re Arthur’s. He’s got an attachment to them—he works with them daily, waters them, takes enjoyment from their health. It is also partly because they’re Arthur’s, but they’re his, too.  
  
Eames has to gently part the thickly bunched leaves and blossoms of the plant to get at the dead and wilting portions for cutting. He spreads parts of the plant carefully, and he hisses a quick breath when he bends a healthy bloom stalk. “Damn it,” he says, and cuts it too.  
  
“I feel like a chimpanzee,” Eames says some minutes later, peering between leaves.  
  
Arthur smirks. “If you see any goddamned bugs, eliminate them with extreme prejudice,” he says. “I mean it. I want to hear angry monkey noises.”  
  
Eames barks a laugh.  
  
Arthur and he quickly accumulate a pile of brown or wilting leaves and bloom heads. “Save the blooms,” he says, “and maybe we’ll get seeds from them. Keep that leaf, there, the one with the stuff on it—I’m gonna analyze it and see if it’s the same fungus I think it is so I can eradicate the fucker.”  
  
His voice is steady and his righteousness is at once ridiculous and stirring, making Eames smile. “To the death of this bloody fungus,” he says, toasting Arthur’s bent head with a sad little bloom.

 

* * *

 

"I have no intention of leaving the house today. I have every intention of sitting on my ass and staring at my plants through my closed eyelids."  
  
"Oh, Arthur. I am sorry to hear you're not feeling well. Ariadne said you returned her last with a garbled text message. She sounded rather down."  
  
Despite how shitty he's feeling, Arthur's lips twitch into a smile. "Hey, Mal." He does feel bad about missing his scheduled call with Ariadne; he only answered his phone because Eames had put it in his hand. Arthur had opened his eyes, wincing, and Eames had just shrugged and went out to tend the garden. Arthur had checked his voicemail and heard Ariadne's voice. The first message was initially cheerful and only slightly annoyed. The second, presumably after Arthur's text—he hadn't noticed the incoming call—sounded a little worried.  
  
"I'll give her a call," Arthur says. He shifts in the chair, and wishes he didn't feel so wrung out.  
  
"Was it something you ate, Arthur?" Mal asks.  
  
"I have no idea. Eames is okay, but I don't know if he'd be affected by a stomach bug or what," Arthur says. Eames' biological components aren't really under any of his previous areas of expertise. "He's making me chicken soup."  
  
Mal makes a sound that has Arthur rolling his eyes, but he's smiling in spite of it. "Your Eames is a sweetheart," she says. "I'm glad you have him with you."  
  
There's something in her voice, there; as though there is something she knows that he doesn't. Rather, like there's something they both know but he's only just realizing it.  
  
"I'm beginning to think I took him for more selfish reasons than," Arthur starts, and lets it stop there. "I think I owe him."  
  
"This is a journey that is new to both of you," Mal says, her voice rich with the wisdom she often has. Arthur sometimes wishes she'd be less stingy with it, even though he's just as bad about wishing she'd lay off other times. "Enjoy what you discover, Arthur. Take chances and break ground." That's his Mal, all right, always thinking big, but knowing the importance of stopping to enjoy the small things in life.  
  
Arthur sighs. It's not because he's bored, it's because he's tired. Mal hears it in his voice, as she does. "Appreciate what you can offer each other," she says. "You can both learn a lot from one another."  
  
"I'll keep it in mind, Mal," Arthur says. "I think...I think I'm realizing now just how much I _don't_ know." There's an easy moment of silence between them, gentle static over the air. Arthur takes a glance out at the garden. Eames has drawn the partitions shut and lowered the dark Roman shades, so he can only see slivers of brightness and flashes of green. The pot of soup bubbles quietly over the stove. It's just beginning to smell good.  
  
 _"Bonne santé, mon cher,"_ Mal says softly, and Arthur's smile matches it as he whispers goodbye at her in French before hanging up.  
  
\- -  
  
Arthur texts Ariadne an apologetic note, and promises that the next she calls, at her convenience, he'll do his best to be available. Her reply is almost immediate, admonishing him to stay cautious and that she'll go through the regular channels before she calls again. She finishes off by saying she misses him, hopes Eames is well, and finds it adorable that he's making him soup. Clearly she and Mal keep up their interactions.  
  
Arthur is a little curious as to exactly what Ariadne thinks of Eames. She has many pointed opinions about androids and the rights thereof, but while she was clearly charmed by Eames on their first meeting Arthur can't help but sense that she has reservations. He's not sure if they're about Eames, about him, or about him and Eames. Arthur isn't exactly on Ariadne's side of the fence, or at least he wasn't and not too long ago. Being a paid employee of what Ariadne would call the enemy camp doesn't add much in his favor.  
  
Arthur's stomach grumbles, but it's not really a positive noise, no matter how good the soup smells. He throws an arm over his eyes and groans quietly.  
  
"Would you like some tea?"  
  
Arthur starts a little, or tries to; he didn't hear Eames approach, but his body's too tired and wrung out to really give a good reaction. "Mrgh," he says. After a moment, sensing Eames still hovering, he says, "I don't think I could handle any right now." It's honesty—he likes the _idea_ of warm, soothing chicken soup (or at least broth) but the thought of sweet, caffeinated tea makes his insides quiver in fear.  
  
"Chamomile," Eames adds, his voice a soft burr, like he's trying not to disturb Arthur too much while soothing him at the same time.  
  
"Mm," Arthur says. Carefully, he takes his arm off of his eyes, and stretches a little. "Maybe," he tries. "With dinner?"  
  
Eames gives him a little closed-mouth smile that's mostly his eyes, and heads off to tend the soup. Arthur's belly feels a little warmer, after that.  
  
\- -  
  
They eat soup and put Arthur's virtual aquarium program on the media center, the quiet sounds of artificial bubbles and water providing a background. An unexpected windstorm blew through the area an hour earlier, forcing Arthur to abandon his rest and Eames to put the soup on hold while they scrambled to cover and protect the more delicate plants. Arthur felt exhilarated as he rushed from area to area in his garden, and then thoroughly drained when he collapsed back into the comfy loveseat. Eames leaves him there without a word and warms the soup once more, giving Arthur a little plate of saltines to munch on in the meantime. When Eames returns, he's carrying a breakfast tray with two bowls of the steaming soup, a mug of lightly-brewed chamomile, and what looks like a spring of mint near Arthur's bowl.  
  
"It snapped off," Eames says when he sees Arthur looking. "I figured, why let it go to waste?" Arthur notes that there's another smaller sprig already in Eames' mug of chamomile. He sets the whole thing down on the coffee table, then gently waves Arthur down when he tries to raise himself up to get at the food.  
  
"I'm not completely incapacitated," Arthur says. "I just feel like it. I don't want you to feed me or anything."  
  
Eames snorts, and hands Arthur his soup anyway before leaning back and cradling his bowl. He thoughtfully took a pair of Arthur's purple terrycloth potholders to rest the bowls on, so they don't burn their hands. Arthur likes their texture. Arthur sips his tea and tries the soup—it's good, homey, with a touch of lemon. It's really good. He's the kind of hungry where a person doesn't know they're famished until they taste food.  
  
"This is kind of amazing," Arthur says, duly impressed. "Where'd you get the recipe? Did you, was it already in there?" He doesn't look at Eames while he asks, blowing across his spoon because he's enjoying the soup so much he's eating it a bit fast.  
  
"I found it in one of your cookbooks, actually," Eames says. "A modified version of the original, which called for a lot more lemon and also cheese."  
  
Arthur grimaces. "Yeah, no cheese. Not right now."  
  
"Mmm, this is rather good, innit," Eames says, happily tucking into his own bowl.  
  
When Arthur's done, he leans forward carefully and puts his bowl and potholder back on the breakfast tray. He holds his mug of chamomile tea, breathes in the steam, and takes a sip. His eyes are closed, but he can feel Eames looking at him from the other sofa. He can almost feel Eames' smiling, can see it in his mind's eye—small, kind of shy, kind of proud. Arthur feels good, sleepy.  
  
He smiles.

 

* * *

 

“You could make a living out of doing this,” Eames says.  
  
They’re on the roof, setting up Arthur’s new irrigation system for the gardens. Actually, _Eames_ is doing the actual setting, while Arthur is checking fittings and directing. It’s the heavy lifting, Eames supposes.  
  
He’s got a length of flexible composite pipe over one shoulder, balanced with both his hands, and he’s settling it in the brackets they’ve built to hold it all. Arthur has things arranged to deliver water to individual plants, drip-irrigate root systems, and to provide localized rainshowers in some areas. The particular unit Eames is carrying is going above some of his favorite ferns.  
  
Eames gets it positioned, and Arthur wrestles a free end into its bracket while Eames walks his hands down to the other end and does the same. “I don’t think so,” Arthur says, grunting a little as he screws in an especially tight joint.  
  
“Couldn’t bear to part with your children, yeah?” Eames says, angling a little so Arthur has an easier time of it. “You know, your spider mama is growing fast. You’re going to have to do something with all of her sprogs.”  
  
“And what would she think about that?” Arthur says smoothly, finishing the fitting. “What would I bring myself to say to her, that I’d given her babies away?”  
  
“For profit,” Eames says, fighting a small smile.  
  
“Despicable,” Arthur says, dusting off his hands and giving a toss-off nod towards the next set of pipes and fittings, fittings and pipes and Eames lifting things. They’re having a good go of it, thus far, moving together and exchanging mundanities. It’s comfortable, but slightly not, still a little new and also not. It feels okay. It reminds Eames of when they’d first begun working in the greenhouse, tending to the orchids.  
  
As they work, Eames takes stock of Arthur’s appearance when he happens to look at him. He looks better, already soaking up the watery sunlight.  
  
His color is back, Eames notes. His face is a mixture of concentration and ease, slipping into his work comfortably and having it comfort him in turn. The windstorm had done a number on the more delicate plants, even those in the relatively sheltered areas of the rooftop gardens. Arthur himself was not unmarked by his illness, quick though it was. Eames had kept an eye on him, the night after the chicken soup. and had poked in on his sleeping form. Eames had Ariadne on the line, because he may or may not have had Arthur’s phone in his possession at the time it went off.  
  
Arthur had lost a little weight, most of it water. It was not uncommon after that kind of bug, Eames understood, and Arthur would easily replenish what he’d lost just by resuming his normal habits, probably within a day or two. Still, Eames had seen light shadows under his ribcage—not individual ribs, just the hint of _less_ than there had been before. They matched the ones under his eyes, which opened when Eames took a tentative step further into Arthur’s bedroom.  
  
He’d held out the phone, murmured “Ari,” and taken his leave when Arthur accepted it and offered Ariadne a groggy “’lo.” Eames had felt Arthur’s eyes on his own back.  
  
Eames remembers Arthur’s tone of voice, just a few short hours ago. It had rather struck a chord, groggy and unguarded and fond. All at once Eames was sure Ariadne and Arthur had been lovers at one time, and on the heels of that certainty was the wonder if he’d ever hear Arthur’s throat murmur something like it for his own ears.  
  
Now, holding a new length of irrigation piping in above his head while Arthur adjusts a component, Eames says, “How long do you want me to hold this?” He’s glancing around, taking in the condition of their plants. Most of them weathered the wind with only a little tiredness to show for it, easily rectified with a prompt watering. It’s a pleasantly humid and warm day, so far, just the right side of muggy so it isn’t too uncomfortable. That is unless one is holding an awkward pipe above one’s head and has been performing similar tasks for a couple of hours, and as such has built up something of a sweat.  
  
Odd, Eames thinks, that his sweat carries body odor while his semen carries no taste. He swings his gaze back around to Arthur, and when Arthur’s head comes up. He pauses and blinks. Eames wonders if there was something in his face to cause it, but Arthur’s expression clears into something too blank. “I think it’s about time for second breakfast,” Arthur says. “I’m going to head in, have some cereal. Maybe slice an orange.” He purses his lips, like he’s thinking about it. He has quite the fake poker face, Eames thinks.  
  
“The fuck you are,” Eames snorts, and Arthur loses his smooth expression and echoes him.  
  
“Fine,” he says, “Let’s finish this one. That’s half the gardens done. The easy parts, at least.”  
  
“Easy,” Eames objects. He leans a little so the pipe swings away from Arthur's grasping hand, earning him an eye-roll. “Psh. How about that orange?”

 

* * *

 

Eames reads his documentation.  
  
It's always been there, stored in his archives, but the tiff with Arthur has opened his eyes, somewhat. Eames decides that he needs to take more of an interest in his own existence. That and he's never actually read it before, all the things he's supposed to know, ingrained into his permanent memory—things he should have been able to recite upon request. His default start text, for example. Usually it's a description of his capabilities, naturally tailored to the most typical uses his potential owners would have for him.  
  
"I am a model AD-30 android, fourth generation," Eames says aloud. Then he stops—he doesn't remember what to say.  
  
Eames is beginning to suspect there's more to his obscured earliest memories than he thought, and that Arthur has something to do with it.  
  
Eames thinks, then, that he must be human, certainly created by their hands. What other creature keeps looking into its own origins with such blind passion, uncaring if they are eventually blinded in turn by what they find?  
  
\- -  
  
"Arthur," Eames says some nights later, as he's stirring water in a pot.  
  
"Eames," Arthur says. There is pepper and garlic and two kinds of fresh basil and a little olive oil in the pot.  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
Arthur moves next to him at the stove. "Don't put the pasta in until it boils," he admonishes. Eames puts down the jar of rotini he was holding. Eames waits.  
  
Arthur says, "I'm a Canadian immigrant, living here legally under an assumed name, which is not legal. I own these rooms. I like gardening."  
  
Eames stares at the pot, the water moving within but not yet boiling. Little flecks of pepper ride the convection of heat up to the surface before being curled under to the bottom, where they start the journey again. Eames tracks a particular piece of crushed pepper, just to see if he can. He follows it through almost twenty revolutions before it falters and sticks to the bottom of the pot. A small bubble forms about it.  
  
"Who were you," Eames says.  
  
Arthur sighs almost inaudibly next to him, his body going still. His shoulders seem to carry extra weight, and poetic though it may be Eames isn't immediately inclined to sympathy. "I was an employee of Fischer-Morrow. I was placed at a mid-high level within the corporation's Quality Assurance division. I worked closely with R&D towards the end of my time there.  
  
"I had a disagreement with my superiors. I took pride in my work, but I. I decided."  
  
Arthur pauses for a long moment. He's not emotionally bound up, words caught in his throat; he's looking out at the night sky, over his darkened rooftop. "I couldn't do what they wanted me to do after I had seen you. Your line.  
  
"I stole the last model AD-30 from the company, and I met up briefly with Ariadne to have its memory control core removed. Then I. Brought you home."  
  
 _I am a model AD-30, fourth generation._  
  
Eames adds the pasta. The water's boiling.  
  
\- -  
  
"The rest of my line," Eames says. Arthur doesn't miss the spin of inflection Eames puts on the word 'my.' They're on Arthur's rooftop, looking out at the overcast night sky. They can't see anything. At least, Arthur can't. He imagines Eames can. To him the shapes of plants and building around them are dark spaces in shadow. "What happened to them?"  
  
"I deactivated them," Arthur says honestly. "I wiped their memories, and shut them down. They were destroyed."  
  
"Entirely?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Eames blows across the top of his steaming tea. "Not even recycled. How irresponsible of you."  
  
His tone is perfect. It's a blend of flippancy, condescension, and remorselessness that is none of these things and all of them. Arthur recognizes it for what it is, how it's designed to make his stomach turn sour. It works.  
  
"I'm sorry," Arthur says. He doesn't know what to say, but that's what comes out.  
  
"Are you," Eames says softly. There are times when he's far too human, Arthur thinks.  
  
"You were the only one," Arthur blurts. His mouth wants to run away from him. His mind has no part of it, but it's like he wants to confess in front of this android, tell him he watched his brothers die, that he didn't give the order but pressed the button. That Eames is acting impassive means nothing to Arthur, in that moment. "Your entire generation was only ten androids," he says. He tries to control his voice, to slow it down some. "Prototypes, based off of a trusted model. Intended to be upgraded for combat, with other technology that wasn't quite cooked yet. All of them had—"  
  
Arthur stops. What should he call it? "You were the first to exhibit some kind of abberrant behavior. You questioned. You asked. You pressed. The others didn't do anything out of order, but diagnostics that I ran showed they all had the same potential fault you did."  
  
Eames doesn't pick at his choice of words. He's listening, now, and his face isn't quite as blank, but it's not really telling Arthur anything either.  
  
"They never showed that they were aware, not like you. The fault, the error, whatever it was, it was enough."  
  
"It was a threat."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"So they, your Fischer-Morrow, acted."  
  
"I wiped the cores of the nine. I deleted their archives from the system. I cut their standby power and watched them go dark."  
  
"And me?"  
  
Arthur doesn't answer him. He's not ready. It's nothing like the full story, and he isn't ready to tell Eames yet because he hasn't accepted it himself. He might never.  
  
"I killed them," he says finally. It's been a few minutes. His own tea has cooled.  
  
Eames inhales, loud enough for Arthur to hear him. Arthur knows that Eames doesn't need to breathe as often as he does, but that much of his organic components require oxygen in greater levels than the average human. Eames stands, and Arthur doesn't look behind him. He keeps his eyes fixed on the distant strip of coastline he knows is between two tall buildings. It's the only part of the sea he can see from his apartments, but it's night so he really can't see it at all.  
  
Eames walks into his line of vision, and he empties his mug of chilled tea into the dirt, away from any plants. "You can't kill what doesn't think," he says, but he might be lying to them both. Arthur can't tell and he isn't sure if he wants to be lied to.  
  
When Eames looks at him, Arthur cuts his eyes to the primroses. The pretty blue one had been the hardest hit by the fungus, and it hadn't survived Arthur's last-ditch division. Arthur hasn't been able to bring himself to dispose of it yet, its bedraggled dead blooms hanging low, at rest upon the soil.  
  
Eames follows his gaze. Arthur can't see the dead leaves, but Eames can. Eames looks at it for a stretched moment before he goes inside. Arthur stays under the black sky for a while.

 

* * *

 

"So let me get this straight," Eames says. "You create synthetic life, life that _thinks,_ but you ensure it has no agency to do so outside what best benefits its creators and end-users?"  
  
"Well, yeah," Arthur says. "It's a booming business, Eames, in case you missed it." His tone is just this side of dry sarcasm, and he has a point. He’s not directly answering Eames’ question, instead choosing to interpret it on a broader level. Eames decides to allow it for the moment. Arthur is typically very direct, and if Eames stops to consider it he isn’t sure he’s ready for the answers. He asks questions of this nature and isn’t sure why, and even feels like he’s pressing Arthur, at times. Perhaps it’s because Arthur usually gives him unequivocal responses.  
  
"No," Eames says, reaching under the arching branch of Arthur's sole tree, a fig. According to Arthur, it's never given fruit. "I'm not arguing the business model of the industry. It's brilliant. Cook, clean, etcetera, let the oh-so-busy modern family live their lives in equally modern convenience." He finds his quarry, a colorful red and white bug with wavy antennae. Carefully, he uses his paper card—one of Arthur's ubiquitous blue index cards he tacks everywhere—and gently encourages the bug to enter his funnel jar. He shakes the jar a bit to get the bug well and trapped.  
  
"Thought these were warm-climate hazards," Arthur mutters from the other side of the fig tree, where he's crouched low.  
  
"Clearly these immigrants have not only found your garden, but phoned all their relatives." Eames catches another, while Arthur's own jar contains four of the slow-moving, colorful insects. "My question is, why aren't the rights groups and lobbyists and the like making more of a stink about it? Android equality, and what have you?"  
  
"You're an appliance," Arthur says, "as far as most of society is concerned. You have no agency, because you're literally created to serve. The large part of the consuming population knows the androids they see every day, mid-range and low-end models that don't really think outside of being a collection of semi-adaptive programming. They're still working from a limited skill set, kind of, like, not quite learning computers—"  
  
"Models with adequate faculties to perform specific sets of functions, like running a grocery till and answering questions, versus advanced AIs that need shackling."  
  
Arthur smirks a little. He sits back for a moment, right on the dirt, and wipes the side of his hand over his brow. "I forget sometimes that I'm talking to you," he says. "I don't need to explain what you—"  
  
"Did you have a hand in designing me?" Eames asks. Arthur doesn't respond immediately, and Eames continues somewhat tentatively. "You did mention you were in R &D."  
  
"No," Arthur says, after a moment of looking at nothing. Eames watches the bugs in his jar, the sounds of his own collection a scraping, slow skitter of insect feet against smooth glass and the edge of the paper funnel.  
  
“There’s a beetle by your head,” Eames says, and Arthur goes for it.  
  
“They aren’t really beetles,” he starts, “but—”  
  
“—a true bug, the fifth instar nymphal stage of the Giant Mesquite Bug in point of fact,” Eames says smoothly. “What I want to know is why the bloody hell are these heat-loving bastards who typically prefer to frequent the Southwestern United States where, you understand, _Mesquite trees live,_ are happily faffing about in your bloody fig tree in bloody coastal Newfoundland.”  
  
“...fucked if I know,” Arthur says after a moment of contemplation. "What were we talking about?" he says softly. Eames thinks Arthur’s giving him an opportunity to call him out, to push the issue. Instead, Eames lets it go.  
  
"Advanced androids and their supposed ability for free thought compared to lower-tier models, human attitude towards android rights, what the general public thinks of them..." Eames trails off, waving a hand vaguely.  
  
"Oh. Right. I was going somewhere with that. You see, the general thought is that you—androids as a whole—are neat but unknowable machines not far from a really advanced home automation system. Or even an extension of one. That's one of our—one of the commercials Fischer-Morrow pitches to distributors, actually.” Arthur pokes a finger into his jar’s funnel to get a clever nymph back inside. “Either an android is an everyday robot, or it's some high-tech toy of the privileged that Joe Public’ll never see, never mind own and use."  
  
Eames hums, eyeing another beetle that is just beyond his reach. "If this thing's never borne fruit, why are we de-beetling it?"  
  
"They eat the leaves, bore into the trunk," Arthur says. “So the people who can afford high-end androids consider them an investment, but they’re still a product. Some activist groups go as far as to say legal slavery, things like that.”  
  
“How dare you enslave a thinking entity,” Eames says.  
  
“Exactly. Their take is that if you think, if you’re truly self-aware, you deserve the same rights any sentient being should have—but then the other side argues that gorillas are sentient, dolphins are sentient, even dogs and cats, that kind of thing.”  
  
 _Excepting that those creatures are alive,_ Eames thinks. “So I’m here to bark at intruders, am I?”  
  
“It’s hard for them,” Arthur says. “I mean, if you were to take a walk out there,” he gestures behind him at the rest of the city, “you’d blend right in.” Arthur pauses. “At least for the most part. I mean, your pants, Eames, Jesus. But you’re not a model with hundreds like you, with the same face, all the same size, the same smile.”  
  
“My pants are orange,” Eames says.  
  
“Yes,” Arthur says, grabbing another bug. “Yes they are.”  
  
"So all these people. Walking around, going about their lives, if they were to look at me what would they see?"  
  
"A person." Arthur says it bluntly, matter-of-fact.  
  
"So it helps that there aren't others like me, walking around with my face."  
  
"You're unique. There is nobody like you, nobody with your combination of hardware, wetware, and capabilities. Nobody with what makes you, Eames, who you are." Arthur blinks and wets his lips. “You’re literally the only one of your kind, and not because I eliminated the rest. You’d have been different anyway.”  
  
Eames leaves it there, then, and gets out from under the tree. It’s a pleasant day, bright and sunny and at least a little warmer than their recent overcast mistiness. He holds his jar up to his face, watching the bugs move their antennae about slowly, not seeming to mind that they’re piled upon one another in a glass jar. “What are we to do with these bugs?”  
  
Arthur gestures with his jar, and Eames takes it in his free hand. “I put in a call to the University,” he says. “I asked about them. The guy there wants to know why the hell there are desert bugs in Canada, too, so I’m going to drop them off, meet him somewhere.”  
  
Eames follows Arthur to the flat proper, getting the lids with their punched-out airholes and screwing them on after removing the paper funnels and adding tiny moisture pillows. “That’s what those are actually for,” Arthur had explained to him when Eames had examined the tiny, gel-filled sacs. “For crickets to drink from. I use them to humidify the plants in the house.”  
  
Eames ensures the jars are out of direct sunlight and away from drafts. The bugs won’t keep for long, but if Arthur’s heading out soon—  
  
“Can I come along?” Eames asks, cautiously.  
  
Arthur’s drying his hands. His face grows serious. “You can’t have network access,” he says after a moment. “I mean, you have to cut your networking off completely. The second your ID is broadcast—” he stops, and looks at Eames. “The market is far enough from the apartment that I have reason to be thankful we’re both still here.”  
  
Eames breathes out through his nose. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I wasn’t aware the risk I was taking.”  
  
Arthur shakes his head. “I should have told you,” he says simply. “You’re tagged, so any queries onto public networks from outside this building—just a few floors, really, and you’ll ping certain ears.”  
  
“Give a shout to the good ol’ boys back home,” Eames says. He’s never felt loathing for the Fischer-Morrow company—he has very little memory of even being in their facilities, though to be fair he’d call them negative ones. Now he finds even the name distasteful.  
  
“Yeah.” Arthur abruptly drops the hand towel and faces Eames. “Shut down your network adapters and grab a coat.”  
  
Eames raises an eyebrow. “Shall I change my pants?”  
  
Arthur fixes him with a drolly amused expression. “Eames, that is entirely up to you. I’ve got dirt and bug...stuff all over me, so I’m going to change. If you want to orange people to death, you do that.”  
  
\- -  
  
Arthur’s university man meets them just outside the market where Eames has already been. A light breeze has picked up, and at this level it’s chilly enough to warrant the worn hoodie Eames has chosen. It’s gray and comfortable and it smells faintly of Arthur. For his part, Arthur’s changed into a pair of dark slacks and a rusty leather jacket with a patterned button-up underneath.  
  
Arthur’s man is of medium height, with a round face and a careful look about him. He’s dressed for the weather in a way that suggests he’s used to much warmer climes. He gives Arthur a polite smile, and his dark eyes take in Eames in a way that suggests he’s more than an interested entomologist.  
  
Eames has earned several bemused looks while walking through the market, but he believes them to be due to the jars of bugs he’s holding in both hands, not his pants, and he told Arthur as much. Now he hands the jars to the man, who takes them with care and holds one up to examine it, the skin of his hands a dark shade that Eames finds pleasing.  
  
“Interesting,” the man says, the first words exchanged between any of them. “I assume this is Eames?” he says, largely addressing the jar. He has an accent not unlike Eames’ own, potentially an Oxford education in there somewhere as far as Eames can tell.  
  
“That’s Junior, actually, the little one on the left,” Eames says before Arthur can respond. “I’m Eames.”  
  
Arthur looks wryly at him, and there’s something in the ‘entomologist’s’ eyes that echo it slightly as he finally regards Eames. He places each jar within a satchel he’s slung over his shoulder, where they appear to be separated by a piece of foam. He then presents his hand and says, “Yusuf.”  
  
Eames shakes, and gives Arthur a sidelong glance. Arthur keeps his expression mostly neutral, though he appears partly amused.  
  
“Shall I assume we’ll meet again in the near future?” Yusuf releases Eames’ hand, though he hasn’t stopped looking at him. It’s almost the exact same gaze he gave to the bugs, except Eames doesn’t feel at all belittled or objectified by it. somehow, Eames gathers this man knows exactly what and more importantly who he is, and that Arthur is not unknown to him as well.  
  
“I’ll let you know,” is all Arthur says, and that is largely the end of their interaction. Yusuf gives Eames a nod, and then he’s moving back into the crowd and away. Arthur looks after him for a moment, then gestures at the market proper. “I’ll tell you later. Let’s get cookie stuff,” he says, and that’s the end of it.  
  
Eames isn’t sure what type of cookies Arthur has in mind, but the ingredients are very simple. “I can never find the damned almond extract,” Arthur mutters, bent to peer into a shelf crammed with jars. Eames assists him in the search and once it’s located, they head for home. Partway there, Eames volunteers to carry their purchases, tucked into a single heavy bag. ”It makes sense, darling, doesn’t it?”  
  
After he says it, Arthur comes to an abrupt stop and leans against the rail bordering the skyway. Behind them, only a few people pass. The sun is setting and the shadows of the surrounding buildings are making things even chillier.  
  
The ‘darling’ had just slipped out. Arthur doesn’t call attention to it or object, but he does have a look on his face that suggests he’s going to say something that Eames had better listen to. Eames gently sets the bag down onto a little cafe table that’s nearby. There are no chairs—just a small, round metal table with chips in the white paint sitting incongruously in the middle of a skyway.  
  
“The thing is, Eames, it isn’t that I was blind to the truth.” Arthur rests his hands on the railing, looking at the people walking on the skyway across from them, the cars higher above, more people on the sidewalks and streets not far below. “I just saw it differently.”  
  
"When you look at me,” Eames says, looking down, letting the words fall between the buildings.  
  
Arthur takes a breath. It’s nothing special, not a bracing inhalation or something that precedes a statement of significance. He just breathes, human. He looks at Eames, looks into his eyes so Eames feels it and has to meet his gaze in turn.  
  
Arthur says, "I see you."  
  
The air is brisk, carrying the noises of people going about their daily lives, talking, coughing, laughing, just walking from one place to another.  
  
“Did you know that all bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs?” Eames says.  
  
“Yes,” Arthur says. He doesn’t look at Eames now, instead staring out at the living city. Eames thinks he’s a little flushed, in the cool air.  
  
“Do you know how to tell the difference between a beetle and a true bug?” Eames asks.  
  
Arthur’s dimples make an appearance. It’s a small showing, but they’re there, and Eames thinks they’re a big part of the chest-tightness feeling phenomenon.  
  
“No,” Arthur says, and yes, that’s a flush indeed. “Tell me.”

 

* * *

 

Eames is fascinated with his body. He has lungs, and they are very similar in composition and function to human lungs when he takes a breath, but that's where things diverge. He can compress or expand his lungs at will, without a diaphragm that would otherwise clutter and needlessly divide his inner cavities. He can inhale, at which point his lungs efficiently absorb oxygen from the air within them and ready it for transport to his various organic components. When he releases the breath, it simply contains less oxygen. Eames doesn't produce carbon dioxide or other waste gases like humans do, so he has no need to expel them.  
  
He can choose to breathe, or not. He can hold his breath for long periods of time, though his inner organic components necessitate the use of his lungs for oxygen gathering. It's an interesting system, and he wonders if the lungs were added because other organic bits needed them, if they presented a challenge, were thought to be the perfect addition, or were an afterthought. In a way, Eames is a strange example of mixed biology. His skin breathes, to an extent, and can gather ambient moisture as necessary. He has no liver, and no true digestive tract—more a few specialized hybrid synthetic and organic organs that process organic matter, convert it to caloric fuel and nutrition. Inside and out, it is truly a marvel created by minds who saw not innovation, but discovery.  
  
Discovery is something that Eames rather enjoys. He'd gone to the market again, with Arthur's permission. It wasn't tacit, he'd asked—now that he understands the stakes, he appreciates what Arthur has done, if not necessarily to detail. Eames gets the scale: Arthur, a former employee and now person of interest to a megacorporation, stole one of the most valuable prototypes the company was developing. Sure, Eames had been destined for destruction, but now, out and at large, he represents great risk to the company and presumably would be of interest to their competitors. Eames knows of a few, and he idly keeps tabs on their stocks.  
  
At the market, he makes a few purchases. He's browsed for about an hour, visiting the open-air stalls, inhaling the scent of seafood (thoroughly disgusting, yet fascinating), examined fruits, out-of-season offerings that look sad and wilted, poked at artisan creations from natives and foreigners. He's sampled fresh vegetables, bought a bunch of grapes (ridiculously overpriced due to the time of year, yet amazingly flavorful—he's eaten half of them before he stops himself), and all in all enjoyed the air and noise and bustle. It's the beginning of the week, and people are shopping. Mostly locals, as the market isn't that big, and it doesn't carry the latest conveniences. It isn't like the box shops where food is kept in a mild stasis to preserve it for longer, and keep the prices down out of season.  
  
Eames buys a string of seashells, whelk and auger and even nautilus spaced with familiar scallops and cowries. They're plain and colored, with the whelks and augers purple, brown, and grey, the scallops salmon and lavender. They're strung along twine, and make delightful sounds in the breeze. Eames touches a delicate chime made from thin layers of a wide, circular shell that shines, dark and somehow mysterious. In the center is a suspended sand dollar, beautiful for its simplicity. This he lets the shopkeeper carefully package, while he happily carries the string of shells free in his other hand.  
  
On his way back to Arthur's apartments, he's caught by a simple tourist trap, a shop out of place in the market that gets custom nonetheless. There's a poofy blue fish with bright green fins, a round plush thing, shiny and fuzzy with great googly eyes. It has a goofy mouth, and Eames is instantly enamored of it. When he picks it up, he fumbles it due to the unexpectedly slick nature of the fuzzy fabric. When it falls back into its bin it issues a loud and artificial _"Boi-oi-oing!"_  
  
Eames is smitten.  
  
\- -  
  
Eames' body and inner workings are all very well, but he isn't satisfied by knowledge. He always wants more, and Arthur is often amenable to indulging his questions. But there's something, something else out there. He can't quite call it a reason, but surely there's more to the existence he and Arthur practice, the daily care of their garden, the careful cultivation of Arthur's orchids. Cooking, cleaning, watching old films, nature documentaries, reading books, discussing existential concepts.  
  
Eames enjoys Arthur's company rather thoroughly—he is intelligent, engaging, and his dry wit is something Eames has come to cherish. It isn't that Arthur is stingy with it, it's just that his deliveries, however mundane, trigger a reaction within him. Perhaps it's chemical—organic compounds and electricity in his synthetic-organic mind—perhaps not. All Eames knows is that he loves it when Arthur smirks, the one that is hardly there, discernible by the barest twitch at the corner of his mouth.  
  
Eames can't help but think there's more to Arthur's life, now. That he shouldn't be doing naught but water plants and provide a place for a stolen android to recharge now and then. Eames keeps his bathroom clean, dusts (Arthur has allergies, for which he takes medications so he can enjoy his prized garden, but dust still gets to him) and generally helps about the place as needed. He doesn't mind, and Arthur has only ever asked for his help. Granted, Arthur let him operate under the illusion that Eames had little choice, initially, but this doesn't anger him in the least. It never really did. It was more the thought that Eames was not his own person than Arthur letting him think so, for however long.  
  
That is something else Eames is learning about Arthur—he offers information up when he chooses, and not before. He responds to prodding, but only so far.  
  
Eames puts one of the chimes outside, under the overhang of the porch that turns into a pergola. The string of shells he hangs in the kitchen, so he can look at them often. The fish he sequesters to his room, off-center on his pillow on top of the bed he doesn't need to use, but does anyway. It's comfortable.  
  
Arthur returns home from whatever it is he does on some days. Eames knows he volunteers at a plant nursery, and suspects he does much to help them remain hidden. Eames thinks Arthur must do other things as well, but he's not privy to them. Today, Arthur comes home, and he's clearly stopped at the market because he has his bag with him.  
  
They make pasta with mushrooms and homemade sauce. It's loaded with garlic, white wine, a splash of vinegar. They share French bread with basil-infused olive oil for dipping, and Arthur incongruously drinks canned lemon soda with the meal. Eames tries it, and he likes it.  
  
Before that, Eames greets Arthur with a smile. He hadn't planned on telling him about his fish, though the string of shells are clearly on display in the kitchen area and the chime is gently tinkling to itself outside. Arthur is animated, excited about the mushrooms he'd bought, showing them to Eames and explaining how they were going to prepare them. It's this that makes Eames decide to show Arthur his fish, which initially only gets him a dryly amused look until he boings it, and Arthur laughs aloud.  
  
After dinner is made and half-cleaned, the pasta pot still on the range, Arthur says to Eames, "I want to see the world."  
  
It sounds like something he's thought about, and maybe like he's not saying everything. Eames spends a moment in thoughtful silence, and then says, "Why don't you?"  
  
"Aside from the whole of Fischer-Morrow and their vast resources being out for my blood?" Arthur pauses, and thinks about it. "I'm not sure, really."  
  
"I assume you made your decision to leave the company somewhat out of haste," Eames says. Arthur huffs quietly at his wording.  
  
"Yeah, it was kind of a snap decision." Arthur's voice is a little deeper than usual, roughened ever so slightly by the carbonation in the soda. Eames sips more of his own, and waits for Arthur to continue. "I don't really think I'm ready for retirement. I definitely don't want to spend the rest of my days hiding."  
  
Eames leans forward, just a bit. "So what would you have to do?"  
  
Arthur doesn't say _Forge a new identity_ or _Take Fischer-Morrow down._ He already has an identity of sorts, but Eames isn't sure it's made for traveling. Any large cities or networked areas of civilization would have his facial features in their pattern recognition databases and espy him likely before he made it through customs. Eames realizes Arthur hasn't answered him, and thinks perhaps to let it set, for now. "I would like to go for a run," Eames says instead, to fill the silence. "Or at least a thorough walk. I'm quite charged, and I'd rather metabolize tonight's meal as much as possible."  
  
"You could just think really hard," Arthur says. Eames snorts. Then Arthur adds, "I'll join you."  
  
They're already lacing up their trainers—sneakers, Arthur calls them—when Eames considers that Arthur's just eaten and it's late. When he addresses this, Arthur shrugs. "It's been about forty minutes. Let's just start with a walk." He doesn't mention the hour.  
  
"I want to go to the street level," Eames says when they're on the skyway that connects Arthur's building with the market and from there to everywhere else. They use stairs instead of lifts where possible, and keep the pace brisk. The night air is chilled, and when they pass over open areas between buildings it's nearly cold. Their descent lands them on the moist streets, and something about the light fog and hazy lamplight is beautifully atmospheric to Eames' perceptions.  
  
They ramp up to a jog after about an hour walking. It's comfortable, doing this together, the air reasonably fresh and bracing. Eames' lungs work smoothly, as his rate of respiration increases to deliver oxygen to his muscles. Arthur sets the pace, and comments upon Eames' rate of breathing when they stop at a pier, the breeze from the ocean a little biting.  
  
"My musculature is mostly organic," Eames says. "You don't know this?"  
  
Arthur swings his arms around a bit, rotating them at the shoulder. "I mostly knew about the stuff in your head," he says. "Software and wetware. Your organics and even hard mechanical components aren't in my area." He's looking at Eames' arms, his shoulders. Eames is wearing a sleeveless shirt and running shorts. Arthur is in a long-sleeved tee and sweatpants, with his sleeves pushed up to the elbow. "Aren't you hot like that?" Eames asks, gesturing at the fabric bunched in the junctures of his elbows, where Eames himself is giving off considerable heat. If he wanted to, Eames could conserve this waste-energy, but he's literally burning off pasta and mushrooms that would otherwise be passed later, which is his entire reasoning for the way he's dressed.  
  
"Nah," Arthur says, and they jog back.  
  
\- -  
  
It becomes a routine. Sometimes they jog in the morning, when the ocean fog is still clinging to the world. More often they go at night, after dinner. They start eating a little lighter, and having heavier breakfasts or luncheon. ("Lunch, Eames, come on." "If it comes with tea, it's luncheon, darling." Eames hasn't called Arthur by that particular endearment in a while, and it felt right.) Arthur starts to tighten up, in a way. He was already trim and clearly fit—they have an entire room given over to personal fitness equipment that Eames has never used but Arthur visits daily, even if it's an off-day and he putters around. Something about running, out in the world, allows Arthur to shine, Eames thinks. His skin looks better and he smiles more, the wind in his face and the air cold on his teeth.  
  
Eames' own metabolism rises, and the running increases Arthur's appetite. They eat lighter in the evenings, but luncheon becomes a banquet. Arthur buys fruit, Eames finds creative ways to grill vegetables outside under the sun. They eat fish and chicken and splurge one day at a Levantine hole-in-the-wall eatery with shawarma, which gets Eames on a gyro kick that has them running to Greek eateries and taking public transit back home.  
  
Eames watches Arthur smile, laugh, or just concentrate on their run. Eames enjoys being out amongst people, weather, sunshine and starlight. Eames calls the feeling in his chest happiness, now.  
  
\- -  
  
One evening, they're running along the docks. They're really running, the color high in Arthur's cheeks, they're both sweating, and breathing hard. Eames has had to increase his consumption of food to compensate, because his organic metabolism demands it. He loves the feeling of burning energy like this, just for the sake of it. Arthur calls it a 'runner's high,' and Eames wonders how much of what's in his own system are endorphins.  
  
It grows late, dark, and chilly. They stop along a familiar pier, the sounds of a gentle ocean lapping at the piles. An out-of-place gull cries somewhere over the water, and then it's silent but for the sea.  
  
Arthur's got his arms on the wooden railing, and he's lit by a lamp. His breath fogs lightly, so much hotter than the surrounding air but it's not truly cold out anymore. Summer's on the horizon, somewhere.  
  
Eames watches him, not shy about it. He likes the way Arthur looks like this, having acceded to a t-shirt and shorts like Eames'. He's lean and fit, which Eames already knows, and continues to appreciate. For his part, Eames remains mostly the same. He's thought of using the equipment in Arthur's little gym, seeing if he can tone up further beyond his basic 'appealing' aesthetic that he was intended to be boxed with.  
  
He thinks of that, for a moment. Originally intended as a combat android, repurposed for domestic use, and then tapped for some special use before ultimately being discarded. He wonders if he would have had greater physicality, if he wouldn't have been as visually pleasing, by some imagined standard. He'd have been in a literal box, perhaps, in an aisle of the same, unblinking. Or he'd have been mindless, a collection of voided parts, headed to an incinerator.  
  
Arthur feels his gaze, or at least chooses to finally acknowledge it. He takes his arms off the railing, still breathing a little hard, but in the way of a runner who loves what he does rather than one out of shape. He doesn't say anything, just brings up an eyebrow enough to form a question.  
  
Eames, his breathing long since evened out, steps closer. "I want to do something," he says, and doesn't elaborate. His chest is very tight though his heart and lungs are at their normal levels. His skin feels taut, burning and chilled at the same time. His belly is—fluttery.  
  
Arthur's looking into his eyes, like he sees something of the intensity Eames is feeling there. Eames raises both of his hands, slowly, telegraphing his actions. Arthur lets him move very close, and whatever mien of calm Arthur had, of quiet patience slips when his eyes fall briefly to Eames' lips. He licks his own, and to Eames the motion doesn't seem unconscious. Eames places his palms, his hands, on Arthur's face, his fingers cradling his skull. They're of a height, so all Eames has to do is lean in, tilt his head to the side, and touch their mouths together.  
  
It's brief. Eames presses, a little, to make it firmer. More real. His lips are sensitive, and Arthur's are soft and so very flexible. The experience—Eames can't catalogue it, can't break it down. He opens himself to it for the barest of moments. Two seconds, two and a quarter.  
  
He pulls back, and one of his thumbs strokes at Arthur's face on its own. Eames drops his hands, and he thinks Arthur shivers minutely, from the cold. Eames steps back a pace, and then another half of one.  
  
He purses his own lips, biting at them lightly to enhance the tingle. Arthur's looking at him thoughtfully.  
  
"Well," Eames says, and leaves it. Arthur's lips immediately twist into a kind of smile.  
  
"Well," he says, clearly mocking.  
  
Eames rolls his eyes. At Arthur, at himself. "I wanted to. Feel," he says. He looks out over the black water as he says it, raises his head and takes a breath, using his body to indicate everything—the light, the air, the lingering feeling of their run.  
  
"Was it everything you'd hoped for?" Arthur says, tone dry.  
  
Eames wriggles his shoulders a bit, straightens. He coughs, lightly. "Well," he says. "I'm glad I didn't pay for it."  
  
Arthur snorts, and Eames sneaks a look to see if—yes, dimples. Dimples and a beautiful flush. Arthur looks good out here, like this, he decides.  
  
They don't say anything else. The jog back to Arthur's apartments is spirited, and they trade off with the pacing, playing with it. Eames figures Arthur didn't comment further as the answering flush on Eames' own cheeks, sore from smiling, is response enough.

 

* * *

 

Cabot Tower is a relatively young construction that belies its age with its Gothic-Revival architecture. Arthur imagines it would have looked out of place during its own time, several hundred years prior, but now it’s even more incongruous among the modern low buildings abutting Signal Hill. As a National Historic Park, it has also escaped much of Canada’s metropolitan growth, despite St. John’s being a formerly-important and storied location. Today, St. John’s has long since been overshadowed by other towns, other ports, and is reminiscent of an old rail town that has fallen by the wayside as more advanced forms of transportation pass it by.  
  
It’s St. John’s history that has kept it alive, a quaint and quirky city with neo-Gothic radio towers out in the middle of nowhere. It’s not much of a tourist spot anymore—not many people are too interested in ancient communications or odd stone towers on a hill overlooking the harbor, itself a long-since lesser-used hub of traffic and commerce.  
  
“The first transatlantic wireless radio signal was received here,” Arthur says. “The letter ‘S’ sent from Cornwall.”  
  
“Nineteen-oh-one,” Eames responds, and raises his eyebrows as though he’s holding up his hands when Arthur looks at him sharply. “No transatlantic signals from me, I promise.” He gives Arthur a grin he’d describe as ‘cheeky’ and holds up a small flat card that displays a scrolling hologram—a pamphlet from the tourist center.  
  
Arthur feels a kind of amusement and something else he can’t quite place, and he says, “They generally charge for those, you know.”  
  
“Do they.” Eames is nonchalantly looking out over the vista before them, at the wind-whipped Atlantic.  
  
Arthur imagines Eames’ hands, light-fingered, making off with the card, and he realizes the feeling is pride. He blinks, and then joins Eames in staring out at the ocean. It’s a bit cold for tourist season, and it’s getting late. Darkness yet falls early and lasts longer than the days. It’s starting to get rainier now and then, and the wind is more likely to be chilly than not. Still, there’s a definite trend in the weather, with days reaching 16C even out here, and staying almost balmy-chilly in the city where Arthur lives. Arthur thinks the summer will come on suddenly, be wet and warm, and it’ll wake up the countryside with fresh growth and lots of bugs.  
  
Arthur’s looking forward to summer. The climate has been odd for decades, now, and probably a hundred years before that. Winters are milder than those on record, with the Arctic influence seeming to shy far to the north. Years of commerce, growth, and that old global warming trend has steadily raised temperatures and caused unusual phenomena—  
  
Arthur allows his thoughts to slow, to trail off. He thinks Eames probably knows all this, and though he likes having Eames to talk to, to share all the interesting things that run through his head, he wonders if he’s just that socially maladjusted that he thinks reciting endless facts at someone is conversation. Eames has never shown signs of boredom, though, and he’s always been quick to listen, with what Arthur likes to think is actual interest in his eyes.  
  
It’s a moment before Arthur wonders if Eames was expecting a reply, or a reaction, to his little card-theft. Instead, he leans into the wind a little, and gestures with his hand for the card, not taking his eyes off the distant whitecaps. Eames passes it over without comment, and Arthur thumbs through screens that show a much younger Signal Hill, an area devoid of buildings up high with quaint harbor houses and buildings far below. It looks proud, with a vague Icelandic flavor, almost. Arthur supposes it’s the Tower surrounded by brownish scrub in that shade particular to Northern latitudes.  
  
He pockets the card when Eames shows no indications of wanting it back, and pushes his hands into his jacket. It’s chilly, with the wind, but the day was warm and Arthur fancies that the streets will be radiating warmth when they get back into the city proper. He tosses his head in a brief motion, and Eames takes in one last breath of the sea before turning and following him back to the Hill and transportation home.  
  
This is the first time he’s brought Eames out here, this far, wanting to show him things. Just—take him out into the world, wander around somewhere greater than just a few klicks outward from the apartment. Arthur had an ulterior motive for this particular destination, this spot on the Hill, but maybe it’s just not the right time of year. He’s researched and collated and if he’d just stolen Eames a month earlier, the timing would have been better. Still, he hangs on to a thread of hope, and keeps his finger on the pulse of a few different threads from various North American weather and scientific channels.  
  
Arthur isn’t sure what his motivation is, to keep bringing Eames back to Signal Hill and the surrounding area. They visit when it’s cold and dark, one time, but it’s short because the skies are overcast and Arthur is cold. They come when it’s unseasonably warm but still chilled by the proximity to the sea winds, taking an impromptu hike along the countryside that’s unspoiled by man’s hand. They visit once during the daytime, and shop the quaint harbor town that’s hundreds of years behind and beautiful for it, the scent of fish and salt stronger than in the city’s markets. They visit it again and eat dinner for lunch at a pier restaurant that serves catch of the day, and drink white wine while eating freshly-baked bread.  
  
The city proper lies behind the Hill itself, where the original St. John’s has its soul in the harbor. The Historic Park is left unmarred but for a few visitor’s buildings, and as soon as the protected area ends the metropolitan rise of St. John’s proper begins. It’s a distance from the sea, with arms that reach around Signal Hill to embrace the old harbor town and bracket it with shipping warehouses and taller buildings. They somewhat keep to the spirit of the place, Arthur supposes, with pastel colors and relatively short heights in comparison to most modern cityscapes.  
  
It’s on the way home one day that Eames asks Arthur what they’re doing. He hasn’t pressed Arthur about Fischer-Morrow or his plans, if he has any, since the last time they spoke on the subject. Arthur has been quietly gathering information, talking with Ariadne. He hasn’t talked to Mal outside of a social context, though he senses she’s waiting for him to say something. To do something, perhaps, but at the moment Arthur isn’t prepared to take on a trans-global conglomerate without a little more resources on his side. His goal isn’t to topple Fischer-Morrow. He has no illusions, though he firmly believes that an ant can move a mountain given enough time. Arthur just doesn’t have that time, and he needs to find a way to free Eames from their scrutiny, to make him somehow invulnerable to detection if not as an android than at least as one of their own.  
  
As for himself, he can fade away, but as he’s told Eames, his face will be anywhere Fischer-Morrow has reach. It’s one thing to hack into a city database like St. John’s, Newfoundland. It’s another entirely to do the same for Paris, New York, etcetera. Fischer-Morrow is jealous of its patents, records, and information specifically regarding Eames. Even remote access, from a supposedly secure location, could easily flag Arthur and bring them down on his head. He needs someone on the inside, and he’s not entirely sure he can take that step yet.  
  
So Eames asks him what they’re doing, and that’s what Arthur is thinking about—that perhaps Eames isn’t satisfied with their little existence, carved out of some rooftop rooms nestled in one of the arms reaching into the harbor, overlooking the old town through the gaps between taller buildings. Their early orchid has fully bloomed, with curling white tails that are a little short. The rest of the greenhouse is still waiting, somehow, holding its breath, but the anticipation has lessened. Maybe Eames isn’t going to be content with his freedom-in-name-only, his lot as Arthur’s companion, roommate, assistant gardener. He doesn’t know firsthand what it is to be free, to travel the world without worry, to go even the next city over and purchase an item of clothing without the fear that the flag on his identity—  
  
Arthur abruptly wonders what it’s like for Eames to have to cut himself off from the nets, when he’s out and about. It must be like breathing to him, and maybe his head isn’t like Arthur’s, full of random strings of thoughts that he has to follow through to their ends, to where they pass over an older one and join new threads. Maybe it’s quiet, in there, maybe it’s lonesome.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, and Arthur realizes he’s been saying it. He blinks, and shakes off the fog in his head. The city comes back to life around him, late and not as busy, few people on the streets. It’s almost like when they jogged to the pier, with similar lighting though it’s much more humid tonight. The chill of the sea is behind them, and once again that feeling of almost-summer seems to seep from the composite asphalt, strange as it is.  
  
“Eames, are you happy?” Arthur ducks his head before he says it, and it feels strange. He’s never really had a problem talking to Eames before, asking for his help, giving a directive, or even just listening. But he talks to the street, though he knows Eames will hear him.  
  
Eames doesn’t answer him for a long time, and they’re at the building across from Arthur’s, the one with the market. Arthur opts for a lift instead of the stairs, which only means that he’s in an enclosed space with Eames, can hear him breathing.  
  
“I meant about our little excursions,” Eames says quietly, when they’re nearly at the skyway dropoff. Eames sounds somehow tentative, like he’s worried he’s displeased Arthur in some way, which is ridiculous. Perhaps Arthur’s projecting. “You seem...a little, I don’t know. Sad, lately.”  
  
Arthur sharply looks at Eames when he says this, aware that Eames hasn’t answered his own question and that Eames is far more observant than Arthur gives him credit for and should know better. The lift door slides away, and Eames just stands, waiting. “Let’s go inside,” Arthur says, and moves out of the light of the lift and onto the skyway, feeling like a coward.  
  
He doesn’t know why, and it’s frustrating. Again, he wonders what Eames must feel. If his emotions make any sense to him, if they just come, or if.  
  
Arthur stops dead on the skyway, looking out towards the Hill, obscured by buildings. It’s the strip of sky he’s looking at, and the clouds have gone so maybe—  
  
Arthur fumbles out his phone, his newer one that he only uses for blase’ and mundane things. He uses the touchscreen—still relatively old tech, but lightyears ahead of his carded phone that he uses to place calls. He opens his bookmarks, finds one in particular, and glances at the updated thumbnail before shoving his phone back in his pocket decisively.  
  
Eames catches up to him, and looks concerned. “Arthur?” he asks, voice quiet.  
  
“Eames,” Arthur says. “Come back to the Hill with me.”  
  
Eames’ brows draw down, when Arthur looks at him, but his eyes—that’s trust, there. It’s subtle, and not a declaration. It’s just there, and suddenly Arthur feels like he could lift mountains.  
  
Eames doesn’t say, “It’s late,” or “You look tired.” Instead, he tilts his head, looking at Arthur with something else in his eyes, a kind of quiet not-quite amusement. He says, “Okay.”  
  
\- -  
  
Arthur’s pace is brisk, because he wants to make it in time. It’s past the prime hour, but the sky is nearly cloudless and to the east, to the ocean, it’s starlit and there’s nobody out. They make good time, Arthur insisting they take one of the light-rail cars to the interchange, where they take another to just before the Hill. Arthur all but runs to the Tower, Eames pacing him easily, and he’s breathing hard by the time he decides to slow. Eames isn’t breathing nearly as hard, conserving his energy, and Arthur half turns to him even as he keeps walking quickly over the darkened scrub, out in the middle of nowhere.  
  
“Do you—how’s your charge?” He should have asked, he shouldn’t have just assumed—  
  
“It’s fine,” Eames says. “Please watch where you step, Arthur.”  
  
They keep going. Arthur doesn’t really have an idea of where to stop, and he keeps glancing up without trying to let Eames on to what he’s looking for. Eames just follows, a little behind, and Arthur thinks he can probably see in the dark.  
  
“Turn off your optics,” Arthur says, and skids to a stop. “I mean, any enhancements. Just be—whatever your standard is, like, as close to ambient light as you can.”  
  
Arthur can barely see Eames’ face—the city is behind him, lit up, but it’s dark out here, no lights, just rocks and scrub and the chill wind off of the sea. Then Arthur kind of makes out Eames’ bemused brows, and it’s because Eames’ face is ever-so-slightly lit.  
  
Arthur’s eyes widen at the same time Eames’ do, and he watches Eames squint as he looks up. Arthur spins around, and it’s faint, could almost be a cloud. Arthur has never seen them before himself, and he’s almost disappointed. He wanted this to be special, to be—something. He hears Eames crunch quietly up to his side, looking up at the almost-there strip of hazy _something,_ not even a color yet, just—  
  
“Don’t,” Arthur says, suddenly breathless. “Remember, don’t enhance anything.”  
  
Eames doesn’t reply, and then the ribbon is green, it’s faint and growing by the second, greener, brighter, and Arthur inhales suddenly. It’s really not the right time of year anymore, he thinks, and it’s pretty, but it’s still kind of faint, just one ribbon stretching over their heads, pointing towards the city.  
  
“It’s beautiful,” Eames says from slightly behind and to his side. Arthur glances at him, takes in his face, his eyes wide like a child’s, his mouth a little open. “I’ve never,” Eames says, voice like nothing Arthur has ever heard.  
  
“Me neither,” he says, almost whispering, his voice low, and then Eames says _”Arthur,”_ and his face is suddenly, brilliantly green.  
  
Arthur jerks his head around and up and gasps despite himself. Before them, above them, three, three and more twisting ribbons of light are suddenly just there, brightening in place. They’re sinuous, and not anything like the time-lapse videos Arthur had researched beforehand. They move, so slightly, and their glow is ever-changing, but so bright. Arthur can’t breathe.  
  
He hears Eames make a sound, faint and choked, and Arthur tears his eyes away from the aurora to look at him again and he thinks _How could I have looked away,_ nonsensically. Eames’ eyes are so bright and Arthur realizes it’s because they’re brimming, Christ, he’s—Eames’ mouth is open and Eames brings his hand up to cover it, and Arthur can see the ribbons in his eyes.  
  
Arthur blinks, rapidly, and his tongue feels thick and stupid in his mouth. “I—you. Wanted to feel,” he says, tries to say, and his throat is full and his eyes burn like there’s dust in them.  
  
Eames turns his head, his eyes still caught before they fall to Arthur’s, and when he blinks, the tears slide down his face and Arthur’s throat closes entirely. Eames doesn’t say anything, his eyes dancing around Arthur’s face, and Arthur feels hot all over, strange and like he’s disconnected, like he might float out of his skin. _Fever,_ he thinks, and he looks at Eames’ cheeks, wind-bitten red, his mouth, his eyelashes in clumps and then he thinks _breathtaking._  
  
Eames canes his neck high again, gawking and childlike, and Arthur stifles a sound his chest tries to make. Eames’ hand blindly reaches for him, and Arthur startles, reaches for it reflexively. Their fingers tangle awkwardly and Eames tightens his grip too much, and Arthur pulls his hand to his chest because it feels cool, while his own once-chilled skin feels hot. He pulls Eames’ hand to him and holds it in both his own, wraps the other around their joined grip. He wonders if Eames can feel his heart pounding, and Arthur realizes that he’s still staring at Eames and not the aurora.  
  
Suddenly feeling very calm, holding Eames’ hand in his, he lets himself take a deep breath, drinking in Eames’ face with it. The naked wonder in his eyes is more than Arthur could have imagined, coming out here night after night, hoping to. Just hoping.  
  
It’s not a sentiment Arthur has had a lot of, lately, and he thinks it’s standing here next to him now, under a green-lit sky.  
  
They watch the aurora for what feels like a stretched moment, a few stolen minutes before the green ribbons slowly start to dim, and then fade, quicker and quicker, until there is only the faintest reminder of their presence before that too is gone entirely.  
  
Arthur read about them, about their behavior and optimal viewing and duration and how they can be so fickle, and he thinks they could have lasted longer, could have lasted all night instead of a few minutes, but then he looks at Eames’ face again. Eames is still holding on with his hand in Arthur’s, and he beams, lips stretching over his crooked teeth, his cheeks and his eyes and his wind-tossed short hair, dark eyelashes, his tongue peeking out between—  
  
“That was beautiful,” Eames says, through his silly grin, sounding kind of breathless and somehow young, and then his smile grows into something softer. Arthur knows then it was worth it.  
  
"Thank you," Eames murmurs, as they turn to walk back to the light-rail. Arthur ducks his head, blushing hard, feeling his own dimples as he grins like an idiot. They're waiting at the stop before he realizes he's still holding Eames' hand, that Eames is holding his.  
  
They don't let go on the ride, or for the walk home afterwards.

 

* * *

 

Arthur told Eames not to watch him shower any longer. He didn't say anything about listening.  
  
\- -  
  
If Eames wants to, he can be quiet. He can hold his breath nearly indefinitely, certainly long enough for his current purposes. He can cease all sound, take no harsh breaths, keep his lungs free from labor. He may not be able to stop the sweat, sweat that carries with it the scent of a human, a man, a man who hungers.  
  
Eames can't think of any other word for it. Perhaps it's foolish, silly, or some other word he doesn't care to think of right now. Instead, he'd rather listen to Arthur, hear his breaths, inhale his scent thick with arousal and steam from all the way across the apartment, listen and shut his eyes tight and drink all of Arthur in that he can while he pushes into his own hand.  
  
Eames bites the fabric of his pillow in his teeth, and clamps down on it. He feels saliva escape his lips, and he groans, rolling his hips even as his shoulder awkwardly props the rest of his torso upon his bed. One knee digs into the sheets, mussing them, while the ball of his other foot skids across. Eames pants hot breaths, working his closed fist about his length just hard enough and yet just slowly enough that it's almost painful. It didn't take him long, not to figure out how to make it hurt all the sweeter.  
  
Eames can't think of any sweeter pain than listening to Arthur do what he's doing, right now.  
  
\- -  
  
Arthur isn't thinking. He's just letting off steam, or so he tells himself, to start. He's enjoying an extra-long bout of hot water, being wasteful, and allowing himself not to care. He didn't care, before. He wasn't the type of person to look beyond what he was told, to question, to press.  
  
Eames is a person. Arthur knows that. Maybe always knew it, somewhere. But he's a person, and he presses. He does it so gently, sometimes, like the tiniest sliver slipping under Arthur's skin with hardly a sensation. Arthur doesn't know what Eames wants, and he certainly doesn't know how to give it to him. So instead, instead of thinking of Fischer-Morrow or Ariadne's voice or Mal's gentle rebukes, he thinks of Eames' voice, soft and so disarming. He thinks of Eames' face, under the stars, lit up and wide open in awe. He thinks of Eames' smile, unfettered.  
  
Arthur thinks of Eames' smile, guarded. His shuttered eyes and that set he gets to his mouth when he's about to ask Arthur something he knows Arthur won't like. He knows Arthur will answer, because Arthur always answers. He can't not tell Eames things, though sometimes he chooses what to say, what not to.  
  
Maybe Arthur's fooling himself. He knows he is, when he thinks of a glassed-in control chip on a shelf just outside the bath, and then thinks that its collection of liquid circuitry, unthinking, is the farthest thing from the android-cum-thinking human being outside, tending the garden, maybe reading. Maybe his hands are turning the pages of a paper book, the ridges of his fingerprints gently scuffing across the texture of a page. Maybe his brow is furrowed, his lips pursed. Maybe Arthur wants to think of his mouth, the way he can smile with his whole face while that mouth of his says something else entirely.  
  
Arthur slides his hands over his body, because he can and because he wants to. He loves the feel of hot water on his skin, and wonders what Eames' larger hands would feel like. How strong they'd be, how cold and real they'd felt out on a hill before the sea. He imagines running his own fingers through his hair, wondering if it would feel artificial, or if it would be soft, a little dirty after a days' work. If his face would have oil on it, be less than perfect, just for a moment.  
  
\- -  
  
Eames turns his face into his pillow, smashing his nose and lips into it, raggedly breathing wet. He rolls his forehead, because his sweat is stinging his eyes. He lets himself fall to the bed, pinning his own hand, still pushing, rolling into his own fingers. He wants to feel, always wants that.  
  
He wants to watch Arthur do this, to learn what he likes so he can try it upon himself. He wants to know what it means to let go.  
  
\- -  
  
Arthur likes to take his time. He likes to give himself a bit of build-up, to head for release unhurriedly so he can enjoy it more. At the end, it's like relief, and that's usually what Arthur wants.  
  
Today, right now, Arthur wants it to be harder. He wants to bring himself off hard, and to do it by thinking of shit he shouldn't, like wondering if Eames' knees would hurt on the bottom of the shower, of how his hair would feel under Arthur's gripping fingers. Of how Arthur would shield his eyes with his body, so he could look down as Eames looked up, grey gone dark.  
  
Arthur's mouth is open and he's not being quiet. He can do this, because Eames is outside. Eames is—doing something, in the garden, Arthur asked him, and—his hands would be holding the shears, or a trowel, dirt in the spaces between the skin on his knuckles like anybody else. Fingers nimble and curled around Arthur's thigh, maybe a thumb pressing hard on his hip. Maybe he'd bring them around behind, touch his ass, squeeze like a cheap porno, _fuck,_ he'd put his fingers—he'd push, maybe too hard at first.  
  
Arthur leans hard against the shower wall, the bone in his shoulder banging and sending a shock through his body, making him huff out his air and his wrist falter. He plants his feet, reaches behind himself and frigs his finger against his asshole, then takes two and rubs in hard circles. He bites his lip and feels young and stupid and his skin flushes all over.  
  
\- -  
  
Eames can't move right, because his pants are trapping his thighs and bunching and it's uncomfortable, distracting. He flops over on his back, and the ache in his shoulder is delightful. It's annoying, but that it even hurts makes Eames want to smile. He laughs breathlessly, and then amid the falling water he hears a thud from Arthur's shower. He closes his eyes and slows his hand, taking a moment to shift his buttocks—to wiggle his arse so his pants aren't in the way or tangling him as much, and he puts his hand back over his cock, just holding for a second. He boosts his aural gain a touch more, and shuts out the outside noise that comes in ever so faintly through Arthur's walls, the windows. He sifts through the cacophony of falling water and there it is—Arthur's breaths, his heartbeat, vital and fast and strong. His—the sound of his hand on his skin. Eames starts moving his own hand again, and he lets his mouth fall open just a little, his lips parting, the air cool inside his heated lungs.  
  
\- -  
  
His wrist hurts, but that's okay, he fucking loves the way this feels, fingers at his ass and his hand back up front. Arthur can't decide if he wants to rest his head against the cool shower wall, hot water dripping from his hair, mixing with his sweat, the pores of his skin open and so alive, or if he wants to let his head hang forward, watch his hand moving over his dick. He does this, and he closes his eyes, still seeing his cock in his mind but it's a different hand on it—he switches his grip, like that, so it's backwards, Eames' thumb wouldn't know where to touch but he'd just rub _there—_  
  
Arthur lets out a kind of hard moan, like it was forced out of him from within. He pushes his fingers hard into his asshole even as he licks his lips and slows his front hand, because he's thinking of Eames' mouth, the way his eyes, his eyes have gone dark, and Eames leans forward, he's looking at Arthur's cock. He's leaning and he's looking, and that beautiful fucking mouth is parted and he'd lick his lips, flick his eyes up to Arthur one more time.  
  
Eames moves, like he's kissing the tip of Arthur's cock. He'd taste, he has to taste what Arthur's leaking, bittersweet. Christ, maybe it wouldn't make a difference to him, but in Arthur's head Eames groans and gently closes his lips over the end of Arthur's cock and suckles, because that's what Arthur would do, he'd flutter his tongue against the frenulum. Eames wouldn't know how to do that, so Arthur, Arthur would show him—  
  
"Shit," Arthur gasps. He's losing his rhythm, his back hand isn't—"Eam—"  
  
\- -  
  
Eames' mouth falls open and he arches up hard. He's fucking his fist now.  
  
\- -  
  
Arthur's done fucking around. He's getting a fingertip inside, he's moving his other fingers hard. He's jerking on his cock because Eames wouldn't be sucking him that hard, but the first thought of those lips sliding down, down, fucking Christ Eames wouldn't even have a gag reflex, that shouldn't be something he finds so fucking _hot._  
  
Something like shame makes him hotter, and so Arthur moves his hips back and forth, thinks of pulling back before coming, yanking Eames up and kissing his mouth, biting and sucking on his lips while he paints his stomach, maybe he'd, he'd fall to his knees, lick it all up and suck Eames down, what would he taste like, would it be salty or bitter, would Eames groan or fist a hand in his hair, would he fuck Arthur's face—  
  
"Ffuck, _fuck!_ "  
  
\- -  
  
Eames gasps, squeezing his cock hard, he's so wet, his hand isn't _tight_ enough, but—oh _Arthur,_ Eames thinks, hearing him curse. Arthur doesn't normally say that, he just, he cries out when he comes, Eames just—Arthur just came, he listened to Arthur come.  
  
Eames realizes his stomach is wet, really wet, he's gotten it on his shirt, _he's coming,_ it's hot and messy and Eames just wallows in it, keeps milking his cock and loving how it moves in his hand, how it _feels._ He's hot all over, he's shivering, he's not done, he's coming down, he wishes it were Arthur's lovely cock in his hand, his come on his skin.  
  
Eames finally remembers to slow his hand, but his cock is still hard, it still feels absolutely fucking wonderful. Eames hates that his semen has no taste, if he can even call it semen, he wishes he could come like Arthur, wishes he could come with Arthur. The thought comes unbidden in his mind, the image of himself leaning over Arthur's body, in his own bed. He's braced over Arthur's body, wanking, jerking off, looking into Arthur's gorgeous eyes and that's his voice— _make me come,_ he says.  
  
Eames digs his heels into the bed, fucks up into his hand, kind of hard and awkward but also kind of slow, more deliberate. And there it is, yes. Eames thinks he says it aloud, maybe hisses it. He's not sure. He stops moving his hand, just holding his cock at its base and letting it spill over again, letting his whole body go lax and just feel where the orgasm rushes through him, fucking with his organics and making everything else tingle.  
  
\- -  
  
After orgasm, Arthur usually wipes up, rolls over, and falls asleep, or he's wide-awake. Today is the latter, and though his blood is still rushing so hard through his body that he can feel his carotid arteries and his skin's hot and his ass is still twitching—fuck, it hadn't been that good in a while—he rinses his hands, soaps up, uses shampoo. He gives himself a little scalp massage as a job-well-done. He finishes the rest of his shower routine in about a minute, and stands there, tingling, for a while. He smiles, because he feels pretty pleased with himself. That had felt _nice._  
  
Arthur's drying off, the shower door open to let out the steam, when he blinks and the image is there again, Eames looking down at him, mouth open. Arthur wonders what he'd taste like, if he'd even be okay with Arthur touching him, taking that from him.  
  
Arthur licks his lips, pushes the thoughts away for now. He's thirsty.  
  
\- -  
  
Eames lays in his bed, breath evening out. He's absolutely disgusting, sweaty, and he's fairly certain one of his balls is sticking to the inside of his leg. It's kind of funny, really, and Eames chuffs quietly as he gently adjusts himself.  
  
His hand's covered in his fake come, and so's his stomach, his shirt, some is on his forearm. He's feeling what he thinks is an afterglow, and it's absolutely lovely. He just wants to lay there, kind of gently vibrating on some kind of microscopic, harmonic level. Abruptly he realizes that the shower's stopped running and his aurals had tuned back down automatically when his own breathing had become too hard to hear over. Eames all but leaps out of bed, feeling his strange come slide over his skin and it's kind of a bit gross, now. He strips off his shirt and uses it to mop himself up—yuck, that's actually kind of disgusting—and Eames stumbles as he pulls up his trousers. He hisses when he pulls his pants over his now-sensitive cock. That hadn't happened before—it'd just gone down and felt normal. Eames doesn't spare it another thought and instead rifles quickly for a new shirt, hauling it over his head and dashing to the kitchen because Arthur's still in his bedroom. Eames realizes he can't wash his hands without making noise so he steps outside instead, and heads for the closest spigot.  
  
\- -  
  
Arthur pulls on a worn shirt and some old jeans, good for working outside in. There's still daylight left and he's decided he's going to tell Eames to call it an evening. Arthur feels languid, but like he could either work or just lounge. He doesn't want to shower again, so he figures he can brew Eames and him up some tea and they can just sit out there, maybe.  
  
When Arthur gets to the kitchen, he sees that Eames has beat him to it. Eames is lying on one of the loungers, and it looks like he's actually napping. Arthur's never seen him do that before. Arthur makes the tea, and takes the mugs outside. He gently nudges Eames' chair with his foot. "Hey," he says, and shit, he's still got a bit of sex-voice going on. He stops himself from clearing his throat.  
  
Eames stretches in place, and then gives a big yawn. Arthur didn't know he could do that either, not as anything other than an intentional bit of mimicry. Eames opens his eyes, and his pupils are dilated. They adjust quickly, but Arthur's struck for a moment. It's also the soft smile Eames gives him when he sees the tea, and accepts it gratefully.  
  
Arthur is situated in the other lounger and has taken a sip of his tea, feeling relaxed and post-coital and only a little self-conscious about it. It hits him then. Eames' skin is flushed. Or it was—it's fading fast, now, and the glance Arthur sneaks shows that it isn't even there anymore, but playing it back in his head—Eames had kind of looked like Arthur feels.  
  
Arthur has another random thought—Eames, buck and outside on the patio, jerking off in the lounge chair. The image is kind of ridiculous and also—  
  
Arthur coughs, lightly, and takes another sip of tea. He takes a big deep breath, and then, fuck it, he smiles really wide and lays back in the chair. A nap sounds pretty nice right now.  
  
He hasn't talked to Eames a whole lot today, and feels oddly guilty. It was a fantasy-blowjob, but still. "Hey," he murmurs, and yeah, that's still his sex-voice. He takes a breath and lets it out before speaking again. "Movie?"  
  
Arthur's eyes are closed, but he hears Eames shift around again, like he's stretching and settling back in. "Nah," Eames says softly, and holy shit, it goes right to Arthur's gut. Arthur swallows hard, keeping his eyes shut. "Fine here," Eames says, sounding sleepy and—sated.  
  
Arthur turns his head away, because he's smiling so hard it hurts and he doesn't even know why.  
  
Arthur falls asleep like that, and he thinks he hears Eames get up some time later. He doesn't come out of his light doze, even when the air gets kind of chill. He thinks Eames takes his tea, and he also thinks he feels fingers brush through his hair, but he's probably kind of dreaming. He stretches, a little, and snuggles a bit into the lounger. He's got a blanket, it's warm, and he's sleeping again.

 

* * *

 

"Do you think Ariadne would like one of the spider sprogs?" Eames asks Arthur one day. It's late morning, and Eames is out tending the rooftop garden because Arthur has an appointment in the city. He didn't expand, and Eames didn't ask.  
  
"If customs will let her take it, I'm sure she'd be delighted," Arthur says, even as he slips his arms into his jacket. He looks sharp, not too overdressed but very put-together. He's tamed his curls with hair product, something that uses static to hold things in place without looking too shiny or sticky. Eames isn't sure what it is, as he's not bothered with his own hair. It's getting to where he has little bangs in front of his face, and he's curious about that, about what stimulates its growth. He runs a hand over it now, mussing it up and pushing sweat around. He squints up at Arthur from his half-kneel, and takes a moment to himself. He enjoys the slightly itchy feeling of sweat in his hair, the soil on his hands, and the way his red t-shirt is sticking to him in places and rasping in others. It fits about him a bit more tightly than it did before, around the arms and neck. Eames likes how Arthur looks in the light, looking down at him with a not-quite-disguised bemusement. Eames smiles at him.  
  
Arthur blinks, and his lips pull slightly. "I'll be back in two hours," he says, and Eames believes him. It's something in the way he says it, as if he's planned his timeline exactly. "Don't leave today." He's serious now, holding Eames' eyes.  
  
Eames wants to ask, but it can wait. He gives Arthur a nod, and goes back to digging for beetle larvae. "The bloody hell do you guys get up here to lay your babies in the dirt," he mutters to himself, because Arthur's already gone.  
  
\- -  
  
Eames considers making himself a sandwich for a late lunch, or perhaps eating a piece of fruit. Arthur's got apples, green ones, plums, and a few nectarines. Eames could refrain, of course, just relax, tidy up around the flat, watch a movie or even surf. He hasn't been accessing the nets lately, instead choosing to use Arthur's computer system (not quite as archaic as the rest of his technology) or asking Arthur when he has a question about something. Re-entering the nets isn't quite like a breath of fresh air. Instead, if Eames were to try and quantify it to human sensations, he'd call it like slipping into bathwater. It's kind of warm, but not always comforting—like taking a bath on an already warm day.  
  
It's also satisfying, when he can call up a tiny piece of information, sift through billions of bits of data, and extrapolate from there. He can learn how one thing is connected to ten others by seemingly random threads, follow them whimsically, or dig deeper and discover things.  
  
Eames has never searched Fischer-Morrow, for fear of alerting a watchdog program or virus somewhere. Arthur cautioned him against it, not long after one of their conversations about Eames' status as stolen property. Eames has even entertained searching for Arthur, but he knows he'd find nothing. Not under his current name. It's entirely possible Fischer-Morrow would maintain a file on him, not public of course. One thing Eames has been searching extensively is thievery, specifically of intellectual property. He's curious as to what he'd be classified as. The best he can figure is a conglomeration of things, of laws, of precedents. Intellectual, physical, proprietary assets, all contained within his organic skin and represented by his shape. Somewhere, Fischer-Morrow has a file on him, and his origins.  
  
Eames is curious, and he'd like to have a look. He's not sure where his curiosity comes from, if it's natural for a sentient being to question its creation. Eames' thoughts on this vein lead him to researching and looking more into the controversy surrounding sentient machines, androids, and the rights thereof.  
  
Interestingly, Canada has some fairly 'reformed' ideas on android rights. The sale of androids specifically designed for sexual service is prohibited, as is the owning of such a droid. Service droids, the kinds that man store kiosks and clean the streets, actually receive several provisions from the government. They are entitled to the use of charging stations and facilities, enjoy free repairs for their lifetimes, and are protected against abuse from humans. They cannot be ordered to deviate from their duties unless a human is in danger, and interestingly, they can act upon their own recognizance if they recognize one of their sentient brothers in a dangerous situation—provided it does not result in action against a human. It's all very simple on one side, and terribly convoluted on the other. Its the Laws of Robotics taken and put through the human legal system, with paragraphs and subheadings and clauses and exceptions.  
  
Other nations have different takes on android 'rights,' in one direction or the other. Amusingly, the US is one of the most backwards, while it has the most vocal activist groups in favor of android equality. Germany considers its android population a part of its citizenry, albeit with some restrictions that aren't too different from human law, in retrospect. An android can commit crimes like any human, and it can be punished. For the most part, punishment is a shortening of its lifespan or deactivation. It's pragmatic, but Eames supposes it's fair.  
  
England has some interesting legalese, and Eames finds that for the most part their laws are distasteful. He wouldn't call them 'fair,' but for all that he doesn't like them, they're a far sight better than what is allowed south of the Canadian border. Worse are places east, some provinces, counties, or cities in Southeast Asia that consider androids little better than servants, or even less than. Advanced electronic appliances whose sole existence is to serve, full stop. Curiously, activists are very vocal regarding these countries but there's little discord from within. Eames doesn't know if it's because such things are tightly controlled, or if the humans residing there simply don't see an issue from what they know to be normal.  
  
Eames could easily surf like this for hours, absorbing endless data and collating it, analysing it. Instead, he abandons his queries and shuts off his access, which brings about a sort of silence. To access the nets, he has to open himself to a degree, and he understands why Arthur is anxious about it. He knows too that Arthur has protections in place, but he also knows that the reason he and Arthur are here, in some semblance of safety, is because that Arthur never takes them for granted.  
  
Instead of contemplating the deeper meaning behind his sentience and rather or not it gives him rights to be granted or denied as some human organization sees fit, Eames contemplates the red seedless grapes in the fridge. He contemplates them with much joy, and realizes too late that there aren't any more to contemplate because he'd gotten distracted and eaten them to the last one.  
  
He discards their vine into the long compost container outside, and decides it's an ideal time to check on the earthworms. Arthur had showed him the heating element to use on the compost to keep the worms alive and happy, and how to shove his hand in and bring up foul, loamy earth to check on their motility and viability. The scent is strong, both off-putting and oddly attractive. Eames makes a note to ask Arthur about it, if he likes the smell or dislikes it. Eames heads to the end of the bin, sliding the access panel into its recess. Here, the processed compost is about ready for use, and the worms have mostly abandoned it for the fresher, slimier stuff at the other end.  
  
Eames putters about, checking the fittings on Arthur's irrigation system, keeping an eye on the beetle grubs he'd unearthed. The birds are having a feast, and Eames wonders a bit at his actions. Who is he, to dig up the larvae of a living organism from its home and leave it for predators? Is he protecting 'his' plants? Is he adding to the lifecycle of the birds and other insects?  
  
Eames sends Arthur a text from the phone he uses to talk to Ariadne, and then he sends him a few more, idly poking the keys with one thumb and quirking his brow at his predictive text errors. Arthur will have his other phone, the haptic one, silenced or otherwise secured until he's in a position to reply, so Eames isn't worried about interrupting him.  
  
\- -  
  
Arthur is in fact using that phone to quietly disrupt the monitoring devices in a small radius of his travel. If he did it too widely, or did anything more invasive than pay attention to the timings of certain cameras and sensors and only adjust certain feeds when absolutely necessary, he'd create a moving hole in coverage that would alert anyone with half an eye out for something like it. Of course, Arthur's betting that nobody is doing so, and it's partly that as well as his efforts that have kept him concealed from Fischer-Morrow. Arthur's good, but he's not sure he's capable of taking down an entire province of Canada and keeping himself completely off the grid.  
  
The mainland presents more challenges, and is far more developed than even the island's biggest city. For now, Arthur's destination is Corner Brook, all the way across the island of Newfoundland and still with the Gulf of St Lawrence between him and the rest of the province. The HSR had taken him across more than five hundred klicks across the island with several other afternoon commuters in the space of about forty minutes—Arthur looked down at his watch and frowned. He wasn't sure why the delay occurred, and it was going to set his timeline back. He retrieved his phone to send a message to his other one, the one he knew Eames 'appropriated' on a regular basis.  
  
His notifications showed several text-only messages, beginning with  
  
 _Why do we leave the grubs for the birds?_  
  
 _I suppose its better than squishing them_  
  
 _That would be unfortunate. Also I tightened the irrig sys_  
  
and finishing off with  
  
 _I ate all the grapes sry_  
  
Arthur smiled to himself, and was tapping out a reply as he waited for the Uni bus. _I understand that the grubs are a part of the little ecosystem we've got going on, but we need to control the population, too. Too many beetles = bad for our plants._ The bus hummed to a stop in front of himself and the few students nearby. Mostly, the bus unloaded. Arthur amended his last message with _Ill get more grapes_ right before the last person got off and he boarded.  
  
He fidgeted during the trip, because the bus felt slower even than the rail. Arthur acknowledged that he was impatient, because of course the bus was slower than the rail. It was just the feeling of being late. He'd told Eames he'd be back in two hours. Rationally, he knew Eames wouldn't mind the delay, and Arthur could simply fire off another text to tell him he'd be running behind, but it just rankled him. He didn't really know why, unless. _I miss him,_ he thought, and he sniffed quietly to himself.  
  
Arthur wasn't going to be gone long, delay or not, and he saw Eames every day. They interacted, they ate together, they worked together, and. This was silly.  
  
 _You're silly,_ Arthur thought of himself. The bus slowed to a hover and lowered to the Uni stop. Arthur hopped off first, and blinked into the evening light slanting through the trees and buildings. He looked towards the main area of campus, and thought he spotted Yusuf in the distance. His phone vibrated softly in his pocket, and he pulled it out as he started walking.  
  
 _shit Ive burned myself I think I need help Im sorry_  
  
Arthur kicked a stone and his shoe skidded a little. He glanced up at Yusuf, who had already seen him, and something in his face made the other man start walking towards him. Arthur quickened his pace, already booking two tickets for the return trip on the high-speed rail.  
  
\- -  
  
Yusuf studies Arthur unobtrusively while they sit on the HSR to St John's. Arthur is holding a handgrip with white knuckles, and the points of his jawbone seem sharper than last Yusuf had seen him. His eyes remain fixed firmly at the wall opposite, a little towards the front of the train.  
  
He'd simply held his tongue when Arthur reached him and listened to his terse explanation, and then Arthur had started for the bus stop he'd come from. Yusuf argued that his car would be quicker to the rail, but Arthur had initially refused.  
  
"The connection's too obvious," he'd said, eyes darting around as if they could summon the next bus.  
  
"I do take my own vehicle on occasion to visit St John's without the express intent to see you," Yusuf had stated quietly. It was true—his trips to St John's were infrequent but not out of the ordinary. "It will be faster," he added gently, and Arthur's mouth tightened to a thin line before he nodded.  
  
Yusuf had driven carefully, choosing to override his car's autopilot and cut a few traffic control intersections a bit close. He tries to project calm now that they are on the trans-island HSR, riding its graceful bow curve to the southeastern portion of the island. To the south, their right, taiga blurs by, punctuated by the brief glow of townships. North and left is mostly darkness.  
  
Arthur fidgets. Yusuf doesn't know Arthur well, but he knows the man as one who is fairly in control of himself. He hasn't taken Arthur for being impatient. Adaptable, truly, was his first impression of the young man with too-old eyes.  
  
Arthur's phone vibrates twice in succession, and Arthur brings it up where he has it clutched in his hand. He thumbs quickly over the touchscreen—Yusuf wonders at his choice, if it has to do with being as secretive as is Arthur's wont—and reads them. Before Yusuf can say anything, he pushes the screen towards him to read.  
  
 _It hurts it hurt really badly at first but it has kind of stopped hurting_  
  
 _Im so sorry Arthur I didnt mean fr it to happenn_  
  
Yusuf has barely read the last message when Arthur reclaims his phone. He taps out a brief response, three letters only, likely "OMW" if Yusuf is to guess. The trip is tense, simply because Arthur is so. The rail seems to be traveling slower today, and it is clearly aggravating Arthur. Yusuf only begins placing a quick order with a store his PDA informs him is relatively close to the endpoint of the HSR line.  
  
"What are you doing?" Arthur says in a clipped voice.  
  
"As you may remember, I also regularly purchase similar supplies from various locations at any given time," Yusuf replies evenly, adding several non-essentials to his order. "This will be no different than a supply run, but with some extras for burn treatment. I've everything else I need on me."  
  
Arthur doesn't reply, instead turning his head back forward and huffing. Yusuf isn't bothered by his terseness, but he is rather curious at the clear degree of aggravation the man is exhibiting. If Yusuf didn't know otherwise—and truly, he doesn't—he'd say Arthur has an emotional investment in the well-being of his android. That wouldn't be out of the ordinary; it just wasn't something Yusuf had expected from this man, from what he knows of him.  
  
Clearly, he's going to learn more this night.  
  
\- -  
  
Arthur's flat—"apartments," he calls them—are across a skyway from a local marketplace, one where Yusuf originally met Eames, the android. Now he follows Arthur into the building and up several floors. The topmost floor appears to be divided into two sets of rooms, presumably one of which is Arthur's. He's got the majority of the rooftop, as well. Yusuf realizes as Arthur's punching the code for his door and using an actual physical key on a deadbolt that the garden he'd seen on their approach must be Arthur's.  
  
As soon as the door opens Arthur is through it, Yusuf behind. Yusuf latches the door and throws the deadbolt that Arthur does indeed have, and then finds Arthur standing before Eames in the kitchen area.  
  
As Yusuf moves forward to the sink to wash his hands, he sees that the flat is somewhat open-plan, with large glass patio sliders leading out to a rooftop area surrounded with greenery. The kitchen is to the right, with wide halls leading off on either side of the flat presumably to other rooms. Arthur's got a hand on Eames' shoulder, and the android's face has a light sheen of sweat on it. He's favoring his left arm, shoulder tucked close to his body and forearm pressed to his chest. Arthur seems not to realize he's still got his hand on Eames' shoulder, the same arm with the burn. Eames is looking at Yusuf almost distrustfully, and Arthur's holding him not like he's trying to reassure, but like he's not sure how to let go.  
  
Yusuf absorbs this and places it elsewhere in his mind. He ducks his head a little to meet Eames' eyes, noting the tension at their edges and the compression of his lips. "May I treat you?" he says, keeping his voice open and calm. Arthur shuffles a step to the side, giving him room, but he doesn't let go of Eames' shoulder.  
  
Eames looks at him, and oddly Yusuf expects him to glance to Arthur for approval. He doesn't, just stares at Yusuf for a moment before giving him a single measured nod.  
  
Yusuf takes his arm in his slightly damp hands and gently pulls it away from his chest. Eames allows it, wincing a little when some of the burn pulls away from the t-shirt he's wearing. Eames doesn't resist when Yusuf extends his elbow to get a better look at the forearm. The burn is odd, almost serpentine, with a marked curve and otherwise straight at either end. It terminates just below the wrist on the outer edge of the android's arm, and nearly makes it to the soft inner skin of the elbow. It almost seems to point towards a vein Yusuf can actually see under the android's skin.  
  
As he gently cleans the burn with an antibacterial sponge, Yusuf ponders the android before him. Eames is rather unique in many aspects. His organic components do not need antibiotics, as his internal defenses simply neutralize foreign organisms like highly-efficient antibodies. Yet his organics cannot resist the effects of wounds, such as the burn, and will need to heal. Yusuf knows they will scar.  
  
Once he's cleaned the burn, it's nothing more than a shiny and raised line, angry red. It's split some of Eames' skin deeply in one region, and there is a little blood. It isn't analogous to human blood, but it is red and does carry oxygen to his skin and surface structure. Now it gently oozes from the split areas, but doesn't carry the scent of iron to Yusuf's nose. His skin, however, does smell of lightly burned flesh.  
  
"I'll need to interface with your systems," Yusuf says, looking up quickly. "Only enough to jumpstart your healing process, mind. Nothing else." Yusuf finds himself looking first to Eames, then to Arthur, and even as he knows the individual before him is synthetic, he cannot deny that he's in the presence of a thinking entity.  
  
Somehow, this snaps Arthur out of his concentration, and he retracts his hand from Eames. Eames is again looking at Yusuf, before he too looks to Arthur. "Is it safe?" he asks, and in turn Arthur looks at Yusuf. His eyes are uncompromising.  
  
Yusuf raises a hand. "I can physically connect my equipment to Eames' interface, no traces on any network whatsoever."  
  
Arthur looks at Yusuf for a long, measured moment, and Yusuf stares back. He has no plans to betray either of them, though he imagines there may be quite an amount of money in that.  
  
Arthur looks at Eames. Eames looks at Yusuf. "Will it heal?"  
  
"If left alone and kept clean, yes. It will heal. It will take some time, perhaps a day or two at most. You will have a scar." Yusuf pauses. "If you allow me to interface with your systems, I can accelerate the process, and minimize the damage."  
  
"He's already sustained damage," Arthur says, flatly.  
  
"Yes," Yusuf says. "He's likely damaged his organic nerves," he says, moving his finger in the air over the line of the burn to the deep area, "subcutaneously. With my assistance, I can limit the spread of organic damage and encourage the synthesis of new sensors in place of the defunct organic tissue."  
  
Yusuf feels Eames tense, and he leans back slightly as he raises from where he's been bent over the arm. "Will I lose more feeling?" Eames says, and Arthur looks at him sharply.  
  
"You can't feel?"  
  
"He's damaged the nerve here for certain, then," Yusuf says. "Synthetic equivalents won't provide the exact same organic sensation, but yes, he will be able to feel." They're both silent, and Yusuf holds a sigh within. "I'm not changing anything about him. I'm simply instructing his systems to place synthetic nerve analogues, which he already has throughout his body, mind you, in place of the damaged organics. Eames has both types of nervous systems within his body. It's simply that within his organic shell, the organic nerves are dominant."  
  
Suddenly Eames shakes his head lightly. "I'm sorry," he says, and it's clear he's addressing Yusuf. "Please," he says, moving away from the range counter and glancing at Arthur. "Can you—get my shirt?"  
  
Arthur looks from Eames' eyes to his lower back. "Yeah," he says, and he pulls it up and out of the way. Yusuf already has the applicable interface application running on his PDA, and he activates the haptic projection screen so it's clear to both Arthur and Eames what he's doing. Also, he can see it better this way.  
  
He removes a cable from his pack, one commonly used for hard-charging when wireless alternatives aren't available. Yusuf is one of the only people he knows who regularly carries one.  
  
"Will that fit?" Eames asks, craning to look at his charging port.  
  
"It won't matter," Arthur says before Yusuf can comment. Eames glances at Arthur strangely, and Yusuf decides to ignore them for the moment. He locates the small port to the side of Eames' charging port, an area of skin with nearly invisible seams. He touches the boundaries of the larger charging port gently, feeling where the large cable that Eames must have somewhere would mate with the receptacle under his skin, above his spine. He finds a seam on the lower edge of the circle, and touches the tip of his cable to it. He presses, and Eames hisses. Yusuf can feel Arthur's eyes snapping to him, but he concentrates instead on gently working the male end of his cable into place, so Eames' systems can—there.  
  
Eames makes an inquisitive, wondering noise, and Yusuf hears Arthur make a shushing sound. Under Eames' skin, the small receptacle within the charging port finds and locks with the cable, forging a connection. Yusuf takes the other end and brings it to his PDA. "I'm going to connect now," he warns softly. "Kindly don't take over my system, yes?"  
  
Eames doesn't reply, and Yusuf plugs into his PDA. Immediately the app pings a notice that Eames' systems are attempting to interface with it. Yusuf allows permission, whilst requesting the same of Eames.  
  
"Oh," Eames says softly. "I see."  
  
Arthur watches Eames' face, while Yusuf watches his screen and taps commands. Eames watches his arm.  
  
The flesh appears to flush, blood and nanites heading to the area in greater force. The burn had already looked less angry, but now it is nearly swollen, the skin around it puffy. Eames hisses again, but he makes no comment. He clearly still has some feeling to the area. The burn begins to change from the outside in, with the extremes moving down towards the regular level of the skin, but not losing their shininess. At the split, it appears to fill from within, leaving a strange seam of new skin, a tiny, soft valley between small shiny hills. The color of the burned area goes pale, then paler, with the new skin at its edges and in the center pink.  
  
Eames grunts. "That'll be the nerve synthesis," Yusuf says. "Sharp, no?"  
  
\- -  
  
"It. It's not pain, it hurts, or rather. It feels uncomfortable, it's a discomfort. It's—ah—odd."  
  
Eames looks at his skin, but his attention is divided internally. He's watching the entomologists' little program, seeing how it's communicating with his own systems. It's not the interfacing that's fascinating, because Eames does that anytime he accesses the nets. It's what the program is doing, how it's showing his own systems what to do, and Eames is learning.  
  
Eames realizes that he can do this, now, should he be wounded again. He can control his systems on a level he was never aware of. It's not like he can accelerate his metabolism indefinitely—he needs fuel, and he's burning up those grapes, he can see it. He sees how his body's systems are diverting energy flow, focusing it, and using a combination of synthetic and stimulated organic processes it's telling his organics to create cells, to send them to specific areas, to—to just do what they know how to do, what they _live_ to do.  
  
It's beautiful, and it's sad. His synthetics can do highly similar things, can perform feats beyond organic capabilities, but it isn't the same. They don't just know. They're coded, programmed, they can follow instructions, but they can't _create_ something so...naturally.  
  
The synthetic nerve analogues are pushing through his muscle tissue, sliding alongside his lattice-reinforced organic veins, pushing by unshielded, sensitive nerves. They're growing, adding, elongating. They sense, but they don't quite _feel._  
  
Still, Eames is learning. Even his synthetics, his systems, they're learning with him. He's discovering himself, and it's not quite a harmony, not yet, but it's something.  
  
Eames looks down at his arm, feels his body gently pushing out the cable connecting him to the little computer. His skin is tight where it's scarred, and the scar looks—months old, even, or so he assumes. It's a loss, the nerves, but it's something else. This scar, this mark. It's very human. In a way, Eames is glad he gets to keep it, a sign that he was once broken and can heal.  
  
\- -  
  
Yusuf packs his things, cleans his hands once more, and simply nods to Arthur. Arthur has half a mind to offer him payment now, but Yusuf's eyes stop him. Later, he thinks, when they have their actual meeting. It's gone later, now, the sun slanting low in the sky. Arthur stops Yusuf at the door, before he can leave. Eames is marveling at his arm, still by the range in the kitchen.  
  
"I'd like to bring Eames," Arthur says. "If what I just saw on your screens—" he stops, knowing Yusuf will follow.  
  
Yusuf looks beyond him to Eames. He takes a moment, and Arthur watches his face. When Yusuf's eyes move back to him, the other man nods once. "You'll need more than what I can do," he says softly.  
  
Arthur just says, "We're not there yet."  
  
"You'll have to be, soon," Yusuf says, and leaves.

 

* * *

 

Arthur locks the door after Yusuf, then turns around and leans against it. The wonder, the understanding seems to have passed from Eames' face, and Arthur is a little sad. It had been something to watch, dividing his attention between Yusuf's floating display, Eames' arm, and the man's face.  
  
Eames' face, so human, almost childlike but for the dawning understanding in intelligent eyes.  
  
Eames looks more abashed than anything else, now that Arthur recrosses the room to him. Outside, he now notices the compost bin's side panel is open, and he has an idea of what happened. He thinks about the wires of the heating element inside the bin, and he looks at the partly winding scar along Eames' arm, old yet new.  
  
"I'm sorry, Eames," Arthur says, and Eames looks up at him in surprise. Arthur speaks before he can. "No, this wasn't your fault," he says. "You didn't do anything wrong." He pauses. "Stupid, maybe, but not wrong. Everybody makes mistakes." Unconsciously, he reaches out and runs his fingers along the scar. He realizes he's doing it as he does it, but he doesn't stop.  
  
"Does it hurt?"  
  
"It feels strange," Eames says, voice quiet. He's looking down at Arthur's fingers on his new skin. "I feel. I'm hungry, and a little tired. I could stand a charge, I think."  
  
Arthur nods. You've taxed both your synthetics and your organics today," he says. "How about no more wounds for a while?"  
  
"No more wounds or no more stupidity?"  
  
"...I guess you can't promise either," Arthur says.  
  
Eames is silent long enough that Arthur looks up at him, and at the same moment Eames withdraws his arm from Arthur's touch. Arthur feels a strange pang at the action, and he drops his hand, worried he's made Eames uncomfortable. His cheeks feel a little warm, but Eames is looking at him.  
  
"I can't?" he says.  
  
Uncomfortable, Arthur resists clearing his throat and instead gestures with a vague jerk of his head at the gardens. "So what happened?"  
  
Eames is quiet just a beat longer, and then the mood seems to shift, somehow reinforcing the space between them. Arthur senses him lean away a little, so he does the same. "Well, as you likely imagine, I messed about with the heating element in the bin. The side felt abnormally hot, where the compost is more or less left alone by the earthworms." Eames reaches up behind his neck with his scarred arm, rubbing at his nape. He frowns, and Arthur wonders how different it feels. "Naturally I was worried there was a problem with the element. I disconnected the power, but didn't wait for it to cool down before I had the access panel open and started playing with the damned thing." Eames looks at Arthur sheepishly, a faint not-smile on his face. The odd thing is it's almost friendly, but off. It's like somehow there's this sudden barrier between them, some kind of awkwardness or formality or—Arthur doesn't know what to call it, but it's strange and he doesn't like it.  
  
"I'll take a look at it later," Arthur says, ready to dismiss it in favor of seeing to Eames' arm—it looks like an old scar, now, but it Eames has it in front of him again like it still bothers him. Before Arthur can comment, Eames says, "No, I'm worried about the worms. I think it really is too hot, but now that I disconnected it what if they get too cold?"  
  
Eames is looking out at the bin, his head turned on his neck, so Arthur lets himself look. The light, the position, and something just Eames makes the shape of his throat, the muscles of his neck, and the line of his jaw and cheekbone exceptionally attractive. It's just a very...natural look, a beautiful one, and Arthur lets himself see it. A faint smile is already working past his lips, so he lets that out in his voice, too. "Trust you to worry about our worms," he says, not unkindly. When he next speaks, his voice is almost brusque. "Let's go check it out, but then I want to make sure your arm is okay."  
  
Eames turns to look at him again, but Arthur's brushing by to head outside, trusting Eames to follow. He hopes if he starts acting like things are normal, they can get past this strangeness.  
  
Eames doesn't follow him immediately, and Arthur's at the end of the bin where the side panel is open. He closes the top at both ends, though he does note that the worms seem to all be in the starting end, so Eames was probably on to something about the other side malfunctioning and being too hot. When he looks up, Eames is leaning against the side of the patio opening. All the sections of glass are open, pushed to the far side, leaving the area just to the side of the kitchen and living room open to the roof.  
  
Arthur raises his eyebrows. "You gonna come out here?" After a half-second's hesitation, he adds, "I won't let it bite you again."  
  
To Arthur's relief, Eames' face loses some of its blankness, and he ducks his head like he's embarrassed. Arthur doesn't stare, but he thinks he sees a small smile as Eames walks out to meet him by the bin.  
  
They work for a while, something like their familiar dynamic. Eames points out where he found the problem, and Arthur can see how he burned himself. Arthur ends up having to order a replacement section for the element, and he goes inside to do so from his secure terminal. He assumes Eames putters around outside for a bit, checking up on the garden. There's some kind of storm brewing over the Atlantic, and it'll probably miss them but it'll soon be that season again. For now, Arthur's content to leave the patio doors wide open during the day and let the warm air blow through the place, but it's getting a bit cool. When he's done ordering, he gets up to close the doors and let Eames know.  
  
Arthur stops by the edge of his loveseat, looking outside. Eames is at the far edge of the rooftop, barely visible between the fig tree and the ferns Arthur has growing underneath it. He looks like he's leaning against the railing, looking out at the dying light and rubbing his arm with his hand.  
  
Arthur wants to go out, maybe, talk to him, or tell him he's closing the doors, but instead he just turns the patio light on and closes them silently, and thinks about what to make for dinner.  
  
\- -  
  
Eames comes inside while Arthur's still foraging in the fridge, trying to put together something fairly quick. He's got a plate of cheese and wheat crackers set on the counter, and he straightens when Eames closes the last section of sliding glass behind him. "Hey, uh, I'm not sure what to make tonight yet but there's those, you said you were hungry," he says, and just kind of stands there for a moment. Eames looks at him, then at the plate of crackers. "I. Do you feel like anything in particular...?"  
  
Eames seems to sense his discomfort, but instead of going along with it and trying to recapture their normalcy, he says in a soft voice, "Are you angry with me?"  
  
Arthur straightens up fully, and takes a step forward. The fridge closes behind him. "Eames. No." He says it to make Eames look at him, and Eames does.  
  
"I didn't think you were," Eames says, and he takes a step closer too. "I mean, I don't want you to think that I'm starving for your approval." Arthur doesn't think the words are meant to be harsh, just factual. "But I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd messed up, somehow. That I'd done something wrong."  
  
"By what? Being less than perfect?"  
  
Eames pauses a moment, then shrugs. "I dunno." He pronounces it like that, his accent just rolling over the words. "I'd rather be less than. I don't want to be a bloody robot."  
  
"Good thing you're not, then." Arthur says it seriously, making Eames hold his eyes. "Eames, when I first talked to you, you gave me half of a rote response. You were never a robot."  
  
Eames reaches for one of the crackers, with something like an attempt at levity. Arthur can almost see the change, like he's put a facade on, a lightly cheerful veneer. "When was this?"  
  
Arthur watches Eames put a piece of cheese between two crackers and bring it to his lips. "A QA check," Arthur says. "It was right after your organics had been fully implemented. I asked a few standard questions, had you recite things. You didn't have an accent, but." Arthur almost smirks. "I swear I thought at the time you were fucking with me."  
  
Eames snorts. "I think I may have done," he says after swallowing. "I wouldn't have put it past me."  
  
Arthur lets himself smile. "Would you stop doing the scolded-puppy face, then? It's adorable, but you're making me feel bad."  
  
Eames looks up. "Does that line work on all the girls?"  
  
Arthur's laugh huffs out of him. "Not with much success, no."  
  
Eames smiles, ducking his head again. Arthur focuses on finding a container of cream. He has an idea now of what to put together. "Let me make you dinner," he says.  
  
"Ah," Eames replies. "That one's better."  
  
Arthur smiles at the pot he's warming. "It's a little more effective," Arthur allows. "Go away. Eat your crackers and I'll take care of this."  
  
\- -  
  
Arthur makes a variant on the soup Eames made him when he was sick. This particular pot is creamy and very much comfort food. He's added more parsley from the garden to balance it out, with some pesto basil for a bit of a kick. Eames tucks into it happily, and Arthur tries not to feel too proud.  
  
Arthur's putting his spoon down and taking a long drink of water when he finally breaks. Eames has been toying with his spoon and the dregs of his soup for about ten seconds, enough time to let Arthur know something's up. "Okay," he says. "What."  
  
Eames blinks slowly, still messing with his spoon, but it's an acknowledgement and Arthur's in no rush. It's not quite back to normal, he thinks, but they're getting there, with that slow method of conversation they favor. There's a kind of easy push-pull that feels different, too, a little more risky, for lack of a better word. Arthur feels something not quite excitement, not that intense, but like they're covering new ground, now.  
  
"You said you weren't angry with me," Eames says. Arthur waits. "I didn't think you were, not when I stopped to think. But initially, when everything was hurting, that was my first thought. 'Arthur's going to be cross with me.' I've thought about it, and I didn't like that I felt that."  
  
Arthur waits till Eames looks up, signifying he's ready for Arthur to reply. "I'll let you know when I'm angry about something you've done," he says. "If ever you do anything that pisses me off, I'll tell you. I expect the same from you. I'd never be angry at you for something like that, for an honest mistake."  
  
Eames gives a soft snort, like he's sharing some private irony with himself. "I am a little frustrated," he says, looking at Arthur evenly. Arthur gestures for him to continue.  
  
"Your man Yusuf," Eames says, "was a part of it. At times, I feel as though I'm a pet of yours." He watches Arthur, and Arthur gets the sense that Eames must feel like he's treading on dangerous ground. Arthur keeps his face open, and Eames continues. "You keep me here, show concern for my wellbeing and you do make me smile," he says. "But you shelter me from some things. I know I can't dig into Fischer-Morrow, for example, but any time I ask you pointed questions about my origins, your hang-up over that time takes over and you deflect me. I had no idea who Yusuf was—and still don't, by the way—yet you bring him here, to our home, our shelter, okay, and you expect me to simply know he's safe? To allow him access to me in that way?"  
  
Arthur blinks. When Eames puts it like that, he feels like an asshole. He opens his mouth, but Eames stops him with a flick of his hand.  
  
"I don't expect you to just spill your guts, Arthur. I respect that you feel you can't tell me everything, or that you don't wish to. But I'm asking you for something right now. When I ask you something, I want you to give me an answer. I want you to answer me as directly as you can, and to provide the information I request to the best of your abilities. I'm not going to ask you about my shady beginnings and your involvement therein right this moment, Arthur," Eames says, and his eyes have Arthur pinned. Something in him makes Arthur feel hot all over, embarrassed, shameful, and something else low in his belly. "But one day I will. I'll expect an answer."  
  
Arthur nods. He hopes that day isn't far off, oddly. He hates to think that it will likely mean him losing Eames, but if he really wants Eames to be free—and that's what he wants now, isn't it?—then he's going to have to get some things rolling sooner rather than later.  
  
Arthur swallows, and he leans back. He gives himself a moment, and looks at Eames across the table. Arthur had said he'd order a real table after many meals sitting on the couch and loveseat or cross-legged in front of the coffee table. Instead, Eames insisted they go out to the market and poke around second-hand shops, where they'd found a simple round table and tall barstools. It's a blond wood with black metal legs, and not to Arthur's tastes, but it worked fine when he'd tossed a dark tablecloth over it.  
  
"I'm sorry if I've made you feel—if I've treated you as less than an equal," Arthur says. He pauses. "When I first brought you here, I knew you were an android, but I also knew you were different. I had always thought of androids as. Well, machines." Arthur has always been honest with Eames. It's just who he is, and sometimes it isn't easy, but Arthur's done with doing things easy. "I mean, Eames, to be honest," he says, and stops for a moment. This is more difficult than he thought it'd be, though he knew it would be hard. He takes a bracing breath. "You changed the way I saw things from the moment I brought you here. Maybe it should have been sooner, when I first met you. I didn't think of it that way then, of 'meeting' you. But now, after I've talked to you, after—" Arthur had to stop, because he sounded like an idiot. _I've seen you're real? I've spoken to you, held a conversation, so clearly you're sentient?_ What exactly was he going to say? "Eames, there's no question that I've had a fucked-up way of looking at things before I opened my eyes. You're nothing less than a person to me, and I'm sorry if I've treated you otherwise."  
  
Arthur swallows, and catches himself fidgeting. "I'll do better," he says, when Eames stays silent.  
  
After a moment, a soft smile moves over Eames' face. "Arthur, I'm learning as I go," he says, voice equally soft. "I think we both are, yes?"  
  
Arthur likes the sentiment, but he can't quite make himself match Eames' smile. "You can tell me when I fuck up," he says abruptly, watching Eames.  
  
Eames tilts his head. The motion is minute, a degree. "Okay," is all he says.  
  
They clean up—rather, Arthur shoos Eames to the couch and takes the bowls to the dishwasher. He stands there for a moment, listening to the rumble and feeling the heat start to seep around the door. Arthur washes his hands for something to do, dries them, and then remembers that he wanted to look at Eames' arm again. Eames hadn't said anything, but still. Arthur turns around, but Eames is gone—presumably in his room.  
  
That's where Arthur finds him, sitting on his bed. He's shirtless, looking at his scarred arm and slowly turning it this way and that. A thick cable snakes from behind him to disappear under the bed, between the wall and the mattress. His charging adaptor is underneath the bed, where it connects to the wall receptacle. Arthur stays paused at his door, unsure of his welcome, or if Eames is self-conscious about being plugged in. Except for a couple short hours before, Arthur hadn't had the occasion to see Eames plugged into anything.  
  
Or shirtless. It's somewhat arresting.  
  
Eames looks up, and indicates that Arthur can come in with a simple movement of his head. He goes back to looking at his arm. There's nowhere to sit—Eames has one bed, a dresser vanity with a mirror, and that's about it. His plush fish with the big eyes is on his pillow. The bedclothes are mussed, like Eames just pulls them up instead of making them. Arthur wonders if he really does sleep.  
  
Arthur's seen countless models and types of androids in various configurations, stages of construction. He's seen them plugged in, suspended, separated. But Eames is so different with his organic shell. He's something else entirely, and Arthur can't begin to imagine him as a collection of component parts. He'd like to see how the cable interfaces with Eames' skin, remembers the little one of Yusuf's, but he doesn't know if Eames—  
  
"Sit," Eames says, patting the bed beside him. Where he pats is a small space between himself and his pillow, so instead Arthur moves further into his room and seats himself on Eames' left side. He smooths his hands over his thighs, then says, "Can I take a look at your arm?"

 

* * *

 

Eames' arm feels strange. The scar tissue is tight, and he wonders if healing so rapidly didn't give it the opportunity to stretch as perhaps it would have had, healing as naturally as his organics could manage. Eames thinks he might need to stretch it, here and there, because he's not at top flexibility. The synthetic nerve analogues almost—rub against his muscle tissue. It's somewhat uncomfortable, but Eames supposes he'll get used to it.  
  
His hands have started to form calluses. They come and go in stages—his hands, fingertips begin to get rough, and then after his next charge they're smooth. Now, with the things he's learned with Yusuf's program, his hands are smooth again. It's like he's never touched a trowel, scratched the outer layer of his fingernails in soil, twisted pieces of metal and plastic together. Eames decides to learn more control over this new...feature, such as it is, and to decide exactly where these 'healing energies' are spent.  
  
Arthur's mostly silent next to him, but he fidgets. His pants slide across the duvet, or his fingernails make the most minute of sounds against the fabric taut over his thigh. He breathes, nearly silent, but Eames can well hear, could listen to the blood rushing through Arthur's veins if he wanted.  
  
Instead, he holds his arm out, an offering of sorts. Arthur's left hand comes up right away, but then he hesitates. Eames keeps his arm steady, and he notes how his own limb hardly moves, whereas Arthur's is constantly moving. The measurements are minute—caused by nerve impulses, contractions of his heart muscle, myriad electrical signals that make Arthur's human hand and arm shake almost invisibly, unless one is looking for it.  
  
His hand is moving, now, lowering towards Eames' skin. Eames holds his breath, and then lets it out silently and slowly when Arthur's fingertips make contact. His palm follows, warm and a little moist. He strokes Eames' forearm with his thumb, near a part of the scar, and the pads of his fingers are dry.  
  
"Does it hurt right now? Do you have any discomfort?"  
  
"Yes," Eames says simply, raising his eyes to Arthur's. "The synthetics feel strange—not what they're feeling themselves, mind. Their input is different. It's like being told what I'm feeling, rather than—" Eames reaches out, and touches two of the fingers of his right hand to Arthur's eyebrow. Arthur blinks, but he doesn't move away, and Eames runs his fingers over the coarse hairs, following them until they terminate. For a moment, he considers running his hand down Arthur's face, to his jaw, then brings his hand back to his side. Arthur's thumb starts moving over his skin again.  
  
Eames moves his left arm, and Arthur raises his hand like he did in the kitchen. This time, Eames brings both his hands up, not slowly. He knows Arthur could move away, tell him to stop, if he so chose. Eames hovers both his hands near Arthur's head, towards his face, and when Arthur lets him, he puts both palms to his skin. He feels Arthur's cheekbones under his hands, and thinks he knows what it means to hear people describe 'exquisite' facial structure. It's something about the lay of the bones under Arthur's skin, something that makes his face appealing. Eames puts both his thumbs on Arthur's brow, and runs them down like he did with his fingers. He takes his time, letting his left hand count the hairs under the ridges of his thumb, while the right hand simply catalogues the coarse-smooth slide, how each hair leaves its impression in Eames' mind.  
  
Eames blinks, watching the movement of his fingers, while Arthur remains still under him. His right hand has moved to Eames' near elbow, and all at once Eames lets his hands fall from Arthur's face. Arthur keeps his own hand on Eames' arm for a moment, like he's taking a liberty. He's looking at Eames like he's seeing him anew, and Eames gets the impression that Arthur is studying him, absorbing him, like Eames sometimes does, listening to all his senses.  
  
"Let me get you a compress," Arthur says, and his voice is lower than usual, but quiet. He stands, and Eames waits.  
  
Arthur brings a moistened cloth back with him, and he resumes his seat next to Eames. He wordlessly takes Eames' left arm with confidence, placing the cool cloth compress over the length of the burn, curving the towel to fit.  
  
The cool touch is welcome, and Eames lets out an audible sigh. His shoulders feel tense, and he idly thinks of a hot bath, surprised when even this errant idea makes his burn scar twinge. He wants to tell Arthur about it, like before, when they could talk of anything, from inanities to weighty subjects and back. They spend the next few moments in silence instead, thoughts running through Eames' mind, speculations about what moves behind Arthur's brown eyes, their shape that's so beguiling.  
  
Eames finds that he wants to see Arthur smile again. It's independent of anything else, a motivation all its own; he wants to be free of Fischer-Morrow, he wants to be able to live a life outside constraints, of rules that say he can or cannot do simply because he's inhuman, and he wants to learn about his own beginnings and Arthur's part in them. He knows that he might not like what he learns, but he desires the knowledge anyway. But most of all, right in this moment with Arthur's hand gentle on his arm, he wants to make Arthur smile.  
  
"I'd like to get a tattoo," he says.  
  
\- -  
  
Arthur looks up from where he's just been staring at his hand unnecessarily holding the compress in place, and then his eyes fall to Eames' shoulders, his arm, and before he can let himself look at the rest of Eames' torso he skips his eyes back to the covered scar. He can almost feel Eames' warmth, radiating outwards from under his skin. Arthur asks, "Why?" His voice contains nothing but curiosity, because he genuinely wants to know Eames' motivations. Eames doesn't answer him right away, moving instead. He covers Arthur's hand with his own even as he pulls away. Arthur's hand slides out from under his, letting Eames take the compress with him, grown warm from his skin. Eames keeps it in place with his right hand as he stretches out backwards, fitting his shoulders between the bed and the wall. His plush fish rolls towards him where he dips the pillow, and Arthur watches him catch it and put it a little further away before tucking his right arm under his neck and head. Eames shifts around like he's getting comfortable, at least as much as Arthur assumes he can be with the cable attached behind him.  
  
His left leg splays out a little, rotated at the hip. The slant of his open thigh is suggestive, and Arthur feels a rush of affection. It surprises him, a little, that that's the first reaction. He smirks at Eames, saying _You're shameless_ without saying anything. Eames' own lips curve slightly, and then he shrugs. The motion is just barely exaggerated, like Eames is still fascinated by the way his own musculature slides over his body. Arthur's a little fascinated himself, so he chooses not to comment.  
  
"I've gotten a taste of something indelible, haven't I? I'd like to make my own mark, as it were," Eames says. "Take ownership of my own body, perhaps. It's just a mark," he adds, the quality of his voice changing. He's staring at the distant wall, and Arthur wishes Eames had a window and it was afternoon. It would fit the suddenly lazy, companionable atmosphere. Arthur wonders if Eames knows what he does, if he even does it on purpose. He's not being subtle, but he's not really being blatant either—it's like he's forcing a comfortable atmosphere, which shouldn't work, until it does.  
  
Maybe he just knows how to play Arthur. Maybe he knows Arthur lets himself be played.  
  
"You are very self-expressive," Arthur says, choosing to look his fill whether Eames notices or cares or not. He's likely overthinking, layering Eames' motivations upon themselves without bothering to just ask the man before him. "Do you have any idea of what you want, or where?"  
  
Eames shrugs again, more genuine this time. "The thought's literally just occurred to me. I'm not really sure..." he trails off, his eyes going distant, and then he makes a face. "What on—people are a strange species."  
  
Arthur raises his eyebrow. Eames could have found anything, from ill-advised drunken ink to ritual body modification. "Oh," Eames says after a moment, and then, "there's a shop nearby, do you think we could...?"  
  
Arthur nods. "Sure. We can do it tomorrow. How long do you need to recover?"  
  
Eames turns his head a little, as if looking towards the cable that connects him to the power source in the room. "If I could draw heavy power, I'd be charged shortly, but that isn't good on the long-term for my cells," he says. "I'd been reading up, actually, and—Arthur, will you stay with me for a while? I've some things I'd like to talk to you about."  
  
Arthur rearranges himself on Eames' bed, wishing he'd outfitted this room with a queen instead of the full. With Eames sprawled at an angle across the bed, there's a section and corner for Arthur, so he chooses to kick his shoes off and lean against the wall. He puts a foot up, putting his arms around his knee.  
  
"We'll check out your shop tomorrow," Arthur says, “and vet the artist. You’re going to want to choose one you like.”  
  
“Where did you get yours done?”  
  
Eames’ voice has gone a kind of soft that makes Arthur look at him, and once again he’s held. Eames, his male body, just as anyone else, half-stretched across his bed, barefoot and looking like any of the situations Arthur has been in before, casual conversation between someone he’s going to sleep with, sharing space that becomes progressively more intimate. Arthur feels all of this in a fleeting moment, and instead of feeling lust, shame, or even embarrassment, he just feels like he’s in trouble.  
  
Eames’ eyes are grey and Arthur thinks they’re beautiful. They could have been plain, and he even thought so at first—thought the grey was just a template, a blank, before some final color was chosen. “I didn’t think you’d noticed it,” Arthur says, the words feeling clumsy in his mouth, like he doesn’t have fine control of his lips or tongue.  
  
Eames blinks, and then he looks at the wall again, like he’s giving Arthur space, and for a second Arthur can breathe. He allows himself to feel faintly ridiculous, and then Eames is looking at him again. Arthur swallows. “I want some water,” he says. “Do you?”  
  
“Please,” Eames murmurs, and his voice is so _soft._. Arthur gets up and, on impulse, trails his fingers along the safer edge of Eames’ thigh down to his knee. “Be right back,” he says, and Eames watches him until he’s out the door.  
  
Arthur detours to his bathroom, moving beyond the couches where they’ve watched old movies and the kitchen where they’ve both prepared meals. He goes to his sink, and looks at himself in the mirror. His hair is growing back, and it’s at the annoying short stage. It can’t decide where it’s going to curl and where it’s going to look like bedhead. He looks like a college student on an internship, with his shirtsleeves and open collar.  
  
He looks down at his feet, and then pulls up his right foot and takes off the sock. A small black circle in dark ink, a simple and barely-stylized rendition of Ouroboros rests on his foot, circling his ankle. It’s a relic of his younger days.  
  
He takes off his other sock, and after putting them in the hamper, he washes his hands and runs them wet through his hair. It only neutralizes the rest of the static product. Arthur just shrugs to himself, and unbuttons his shirt, pulls off his slacks. He changes into a plain white tee and some gray sweats, because he feels lazy and something remarkably similar to butterflies in his stomach.  
  
Arthur fills two glasses with water in the kitchen, and adds a pair of ice cubes to each. He doesn’t like icewater or sweaty glasses, but he likes room-temp water that’s been a little cooled. Eames has never done anything other than drink a cold bottle from the fridge or a warm one from when he’s been working outside. Either way, he knows where the ice is.  
  
Arthur picks up both the glasses and heads back to Eames’ room. He knocks with his knuckles on the doorframe, and immediately feels foolish for doing so. Eames hasn’t moved, and he only flicks his eyes at Arthur when he comes in, still indolent and nice to look at.  
  
Arthur holds out a glass, leaning into the doorway. "Here, I forgot something," Arthur says, and as soon as Eames leans up to take the glass—with his bad arm—Arthur bites the inside of his mouth and goes to the kitchen again, his own glass still in hand.  
  
"Moron," he mutters to himself, feeling stupid for even saying it. He's having _date_ flutters of all things, which is patently foolish. Arthur snaps a pair of mint leaves off the spring in a dish filled with water on the counter. He puts one whole leaf into his mouth, just letting it rest on his tongue and feeling the odd texture. It makes him thirsty, so he drains his glass and refills it, clinking the ice at the bottom.  
  
He makes himself walk back into Eames room without knocking or dragging his eyes across Eames’ bare belly. He settles on the bed like he was before, but he draws up his other knee this time, leaving the area between him and Eames more open.  
  
“Okay,” he says, and the mint leaf is still on his tongue so it sounds funny. “Let’s talk.” He starts idly chewing the leaf, cutting it with his front teeth. He holds the other out to Eames, but Eames gives it a glance and then a small shake of his head. Arthur drops it into his own glass of water as Eames takes a healthy gulp of his, and then another, and then his glass is empty. Wordlessly, Arthur holds his out. “I already drank a whole glass,” he says, and only after this does Eames accept it.  
  
Eames gives the mint leaf a funny look, and fishes it out. He puts the stem in his mouth anyway, twirling the leaf presumably with his tongue so it dances and moves between his closed lips a little.  
  
“I’ve been wondering,” he says around the leaf, and just like that Arthur’s imagining a cigarette between those lips, Eames’ eyes half-lidded and lazy. “I’ve got my cells, right, but they’ve a finite life. And my organic components, they’re like any organic system, as you said, based off of DNA. They’re programmed for cell death just like any living thing.” Eames takes the leaf out of his mouth and looks at it, nibbles the stem again. He drops it into Arthur’s glass and takes a swig, licks his lips.  
  
Arthur’s staring at his mouth, but he’s hearing Eames. “You’re thinking about death?” he says.  
  
Eames doesn’t respond immediately, holding the leaf he’s fished back out and nibbling on it. His knuckles are bent near his mouth, and he’s still looking at the far wall. It’s blank; Arthur thinks he should get a painting to put there, so Eames will have something to look at when he thinks.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames says after a long pause, after Arthur’s slouched more against the wall next to him. It’s not very comfortable, but it’s not too bad either. “I guess with all my other existential bullshit, I had to get wrapped up in it sometime.”  
  
“I don’t actually know your lifespan, but I could find out,” Arthur says, after a pause that’s stretched out a bit long. “I’m starting to realize you’re really unique, Eames. You’re not—mind you I only knew so much about you before I even saw you or the rest of your unit the first time, so I thought you were pretty basic. And you’ve got the internals that’re largely based off of the line you started out as, but. Your organics in the mix, some specialized components I have no knowledge of...you really are special. You’re one of a kind, now.”  
  
Arthur stops, because there’s a reason Eames is one-of-a-kind. He slouches against the wall more, kind of hurting his neck but not caring, and kicks out the knee he’d had up. “It’s not something you’ll have to worry about for a long time,” Arthur says, “far as I know. Unless we piss off the company.”  
  
“I wonder what would fail first,” Eames says, almost like he’s not listening to Arthur at all. “If my organic components would eventually just wear out, whatever source cells I’ve got to make more, to regenerate, when those just...stop. Or if my hard mechanics will age, wear down. Maybe my cells will stop being stable, no good for a charge. I just wonder, I mean, will I just break down? Or will I die?”  
  
Arthur’s quiet, because Eames goes quiet. “I don’t know,” he says, feeling like he’s intruding on the silence even though he doesn’t like it. Then he sits up, cracks his neck, and looks right at Eames.  
  
“Eames,” Arthur says, “this is a fucked-up conversation.” He means it half-lightly, but Eames just blinks at him. The mint leaf is gone somewhere, either eaten or in the glass. Eames has nothing in his mouth, and is just looking back at Arthur, and now Arthur feels the mood fall. He sighs. “I mean, they’re legitimate questions, I just.” Arthur turns his head to look at Eames’ wall, and pulls his right leg back up, wrapping his arms around the knee and hunching forward. “I wish I had better answers for you,” he says, and he thinks he sounds petulant, trite.  
  
Eames is quiet for a long time. Arthur blinks, sleepy after the day’s events, and then he feels fingers brush along his leg of his sweats, down to his foot. They circle at his ankle, following the tattoo there. Arthur realizes he hasn’t answered Eames. “I got this years ago,” he says, and then, “it doesn’t mean anything special. I just.” He huffs. “I thought it looked cool.”  
  
Eames strokes his fingers over the small circle of ink, again, and again. “I like it,” he says.  
  
It’s an impulse, but not—gentler, almost inevitable. Arthur’s arm lets go of his knee, and he reaches across to touch Eames’ scarred arm, moves up to the sensitive soft skin inside his elbow. He touches there, draws his fingers up to Eames’ bicep. “You’re really fit,” he says, knowing Eames will get the British connotation of the word.  
  
Eames’ eyes flick up to his, as if following his thoughts. That small curve is in his lips again, a not-quite smirk that’s infuriating and winsome in equal measure. “Been running with this bloke,” Eames says, and suddenly his voice as some flavor to it, some kind of East End laze mixing with his unique, hoarse softness. It makes Arthur’s smirk pull into a grin.  
  
“Have you,” Arthur says, and he slides his hand up a little further, being a little more overt about feeling up Eames’ muscle. The angle’s kind of awkward. “I don’t know how I feel about that.” He’s pushing, and he knows it, but the ball’s bouncing back and forth between them and he’s never been one for dicking around once he knows the invitation’s out there.  
  
“Mm,” is all Eames says, and Arthur drops his hand, shifts to turn more towards Eames. Eames’ fingers are still stroking his ankle and foot, so Arthur takes that as permission to close up the space a bit. His knee leans toward Eames, leg knocking into Eames’ arm. Eames doesn’t move away or stop touching him.  
  
“You go out there, go running, to get looked at?” Arthur says, his own voice dropping words, going lower.  
  
“Bet people look at my bloke all the time,” Eames says, “he’s fit.”  
  
“I bet they look at you more,” Arthur says. “I would.”  
  
Eames smiles at him then, a small, genuine expression. “I hardly think you’re that much of a narcissist that you’d do otherwise, darling,” he says, and his voice is closer to what Arthur’s used to. “But I’m afraid I haven’t caught you watching me.” This is more of a purr, and it’s doing things to Arthur’s spine.  
  
Arthur wants to say something clever, or even just tell Eames he’s out of clever shit to say because Eames isn’t wearing a shirt and he’s purring at Arthur and touching his tattoo. “I really like it when you call me that,” he says instead, the words just coming on their own.  
  
Eames’ face goes kind of serious at the same time his eyes lose some of their edges. He moves, fluid, and Arthur’s eyes would watch his arms and his torso flex but they’re caught on Eames’, bright even in the modest lighting of his room.  
  
Arthur’s moving back, and it’s only then that he realizes he was leaning, resting the hand that had been on Eames’ bicep on his bed, partway over him. Eames doesn’t let him go far, his right arm snaking up and gently grasping the back of Arthur’s neck. It makes Arthur inhale, heady, nervous, excited, scared. It’s all of that and something more, because Arthur can _see_ the same in Eames’ eyes, so very alive.  
  
Eames gets his own body under him, and as his hand gently falls from Arthur’s nape to his shoulder, down his arm, Arthur shifts around so he’s facing Eames, his knee bent and his other foot touching one of Eames’ just off the bed.  
  
Eames tilts his head to the side, looking at Arthur’s shoulder and slowly moving his eyes back up to his face, his head straightening. He looks down at Arthur’s mouth, and then both his hands come up again. Arthur blinks slowly, breathing, looking at Eames’ chin, his mouth, his nose, and finally his eyes. Eames’ hands are warm on his face, and Arthur feels a little sweat gathering under his arms, low on his back, on his upper lip. The room’s warm, Eames is warm, and Arthur is warm.  
  
Eames looks up at him from a slight angle, and Arthur’s with him on a foggy pier under a sodium lamp, but this time is slower, and more...just more.  
  
Arthur leans forward, his eyes fluttering shut, knowing Eames will meet him.  
  
Eames does.


	2. Act II

Arthur’s in the kitchen, putting together tea. He usually drinks coffee, and tea when he’s in the mood. Today, he’s in the mood for it.

Earl Grey, the kind Eames likes, brewed too long according to the tin, loaded with raw cane sugar so the water turns creamy tan before it clears, then dark when Arthur drops the infuser in the mug.

Eames likes the loose leaves, even though sometimes Arthur sees him bemusedly picking one off his spoon or out of his teeth. Arthur likes to watch Eames’ face when he takes that first sip, his hand on his mug, sometimes both. His eyes go half-shut, and he looks so sleepy, like he’s just woken up, hair all mussed. Arthur loves looking at him like that.

Arthur’s being more honest with himself, in the past few days. Like how he really enjoys looking at Eames, taking enjoyment from Eames being made happy by small things, knowing that it’s okay to be looking. Knowing that something between he and Eames has made it okay, a mutual permission that wasn’t quite there before.

Today, this early morning, Arthur brews tea like Eames likes it, makes two mugs worth, and waits for Eames to shuffle into the main room. There’s daylight out there, peeking through the shades over the glass doors, and there won’t be mist anymore. It’s getting too warm for that, now.

Arthur likes this feeling that he’s not quite on solid ground any more. There’s an anticipatory feeling, like the atmosphere’s changed. It isn’t so much that he’s lost his footing; in contrast, he’s sure-footed, it’s just that he doesn’t know where the next steps lead, entirely. It’s exciting and humbling at once, a feeling that’s the same flavor as the night before.

\- -

The touch of Eames’ lips on his set Arthur’s heart fluttering. He’d felt it few times in his life. It happened when he met Mal; with Ariadne and the first time they saw the expanse of each other’s skin. It was happening again, Eames’ mouth barely touching his. Arthur increased the pressure.

 Eames’ lips were soft, and dry. So were Arthur’s, but he just held them there, noses touching, felt Eames gently waiting, not quite pressing back but meeting him in space.

 It was gentle, not really tentative, not really careful. It was like meeting someone for the first time and realizing they’ve known you all along.

 - -

 When Eames does shuffle in from his hallway, Arthur feels a smile underneath his face, but more he feels a softness take over his features. He doesn’t bother to control it, lets the reins go for a moment and just watches Eames. Eames is rubbing at one eye, and his hair is all bed-head. Arthur doesn’t know if the rubbing is a mannerism or if Eames really does it because he feels he needs to, instinct. Arthur knows now that Eames sleeps sometimes, knows that he can dream, knows what it’s like to feel Eames’ thumbs on either side of his face, just near the corners of his mouth, warm skin.

 Eames opens both his eyes and sees Arthur just standing there, back to the counter where the kettle is still steaming, two mugs at his side. He gives Arthur a soft smile, one that uses hardly any motion at all but is said with his whole face.

 Arthur just knows his dimples are showing, and he’s only returning the smile in kind, barely-there and saying more than words could hope to. For the first time since Arthur fled the UK and Fischer-Morrow, illegally entering Canada under an assumed name, he feels like he’s home.

 

* * *

 

Arthur owns a straight razor, but uses a rechargeable trimmer more often than not. He owns three suits, and wears jeans with worn knees and comfortable t-shirts around the flat, in the garden. He sometimes throws a blazer on when he's headed to market or in town. He gets dirt under his fingernails and trims them with old metal clippers instead of supplementing his diet with inhibitors. These are things Eames knows about Arthur, things Eames has learned.

Eames has learned that Arthur kisses confidently, like he knows what he wants and how to give in return. He hasn't kissed Eames like this, and this is why Eames knows. Arthur's kissed Eames in a way that's almost tentative, but not quite, not after that first touch when Eames felt something in Arthur loosen, come back together.

It was surprising, Eames remembers, how Arthur had touched Eames' wrists, had closed his fingers around them, thumb of his right hand stroking down the inside of Eames' left, as if seeking his pulse. Eames felt as though he was the one being discovered, when his original intention had been the same. Arthur's lips had been a little dry, and softer than Eames expected, and lovely.

Eames had kept his eyes open, just for a moment, before he realized why Arthur had closed his. When he did, his other senses awakened--even Eames, an android, relied heavily on visual input. Closing his eyes allowed him to concentrate more on the tactile, the scent of Arthur's warm skin, the sound of his breath. Arthur's hands on him, one sliding up his left arm, over the scar, to rest on his shoulder--it was something Eames wanted to keep.

It is one thing to know, abstractly, that this discovery is mutual, and another to experience it. Just as Eames has learned things about Arthur, Arthur has learned Eames, slowly, by pieces, moments. A gentle, offhand touch at the kitchen stove, over a pot of pasta; a quick grin across green leaves, on their knees in Arthur’s ferns; a special smile, just for them, amongst brilliantly blooming _Dendrophylax lindenii_ in their greenhouse.

Eames asked if he could keep the one, their first bloom. It has to stay in the greenhouse, because it's smaller and Arthur says it needs to be established before Eames can create the right microclimate in his room for it. Eames says he doesn't want it in his room, because he has no windows, and he wants his orchid to see the sun.

Arthur had looked at him, and he'd said, "Okay," and he'd smiled a small smile that made Eames touch the tails of his own little Ghost Orchid as he'd touched Arthur's face.

He liked the way it felt, the texture of the tails on his fingertips.

\- -

"Where would you like to go first today?"

Arthur's buttoned up. He looks good. The weather is nice enough, not yet too warm, that Arthur's all dolled up, suit jacket, waistcoat, hair smoothed but loose. He's cut it, so some of the curl is gone. Eames thinks he looks mighty sharp, but he can't help but feel as if there's a sudden bit of wall, there, in the fabric, the cut and the lines. Eames wants to reassure himself, to push a little, reach out and push an imaginary piece of lint off of Arthur's suit. He must stare too long, because Arthur says, "This is for tonight," and unbuttons the suit jacket.

"I know we need grapes and oranges," Eames says, and then smiles a little sheepishly. "I mean, I could certainly go for more grapes and oranges."

Arthur smirks a little, but something about it still feels off. This morning, Arthur was fine--all soft looks that Eames didn't know what to do with, other than basking in them, so he did. Now, even with the jacket off, he looks too put-together, separate from the same room he's standing in with Eames. He doesn't say anything immediately, so Eames adds, "I'd still like to visit the parlor, and vet the artist, as you say."

Arthur gives him a short nod, and it's as though he's being businesslike, professional, expecting something less than pleasant for the day.

"What are you gearing up for, Arthur?" Eames asks, stepping up from the lower level of the living area by the sofa and matching Arthur's height. Arthur's face stills, and he looks almost resigned. His hands stop fiddling with his waistcoat, and he lets them fall to his sides. "Give me a minute," he tells Eames, the tone of his voice acknowledging the odd space between them. He disappears into his rooms, and Eames wipes a hand over his face--something he learned from watching movies--and waits.

\- -

The night before, Arthur had used his old secure phone. He had placed a call across the ocean, and had waited for a similar archaic device somewhere in France to pick up. Arthur had heard the gentle greeting, as though she hadn't immediately known who was calling at that number, at that hour.

"Mal," Arthur had said, his heart heavy in his chest, "it's time."

\- -

Arthur hangs his suit jacket in his closet, and unbuttons his waistcoat. This he lays upon his bed until he can take off his tie and shirt, before putting the ensemble together and placing it in his closet. He removes his shoes, and lays each sock on the bed. His pants follow, and he replaces them with a simple pair of beat-up cargo pants he's used for gardening. He throws on a long-sleeved shirt and pushes the cuffs up to his elbows, and runs a hand through his hair, messing it up. He puts on some regular socks and his less beat-up pair of sneakers. They just slip on, because he never bothers to untie the laces.

The night before, Arthur had put his head in his hands and sat on the edge of his bed, barefoot and seeing the edge of his tattoo over the cuff of his sweats. He could still feel Eames' fingers, tracing it, could still feel a shiver run through his nerves at the sense-memory, so fresh, of Eames' mouth against his.

The evening before, Arthur had let himself fall, had let go. It's too late for him to back out now, for him to give anything less than he's promised himself that he would, that he's promised Eames without saying as much.

This morning, Arthur had let Eames see him, as he had been doing but more. He hadn't hidden anything, per se--his anxiety had saved itself for now. Instead, Eames would have seen his eyes, probably read things there that Arthur didn't fully understand. And that was okay--if Arthur was going to bare himself, as he planned to tonight, well. Better get a head start, and maybe Eames wouldn't hate him. He didn't think Eames would be quick to forgive, but then maybe he was expecting too much in the first place, being too dramatic.

Arthur stares down at his shoes. Remembers blank eyes, for the most part. But there were--once, twice, right before, flashes of surprise, of something he could call fear, and then--dim, quiet, deactivation.

Maybe Eames wouldn't--he'd _care,_ Arthur was certain, but he hadn't known them, did he?

Not any longer, at any rate.

There is nothing for it. Arthur sighs, kicked his shoes to settle them on his feet, and goes back out to meet Eames and get him his tattoo.

\- -

Arthur emerges wearing casual clothes, a shirt that looks good on him with the sleeves pushed up. Eames wants to put his hands on the bunched fabric at his elbows, to feel Arthur offer just enough resistance to meet him, warm through cotton under his palms. Instead, Arthur surprises Eames once more by walking to him. After a second's hesitation, Arthur steps into Eames' space and reaches out, takes one of Eames' hands. He holds it in both of his like he wants to do more, like maybe he reconsidered his original intention and decided to play it safer. For whom, Eames isn't sure, but he lets Arthur hold his hand anyway. What Arthur says next makes no sense.

"Eames," Arthur tells him, "I'm not a good person." Before he can continue, Eames puts the fingers of his other hand gently over Arthur's mouth. Arthur blinks, and looks at him. His eyes are brown, they've always been brown, and their shape has always been beguiling.

"Hush," Eames says. "Whatever this is," he says, looking at Arthur's cheekbones, his jaw, his chin as he draws his fingers away, "save it for your later."

The first tattoo parlor they visit is a small franchise place that has a few artists and ink application systems. Arthur doesn't think the lead artist is too bad but his style isn't something Eames is interested in. Eames explains, bluntly, that he doesn't quite know what he wants, but he takes a look at the machine that administers the tattoo and decides it isn't for him.

They walk through the skyways, from one open-air pavilion to another, through busier malls and by strips of department stores. The area within the city proper is varied enough, the vehicular traffic thicker, pedestrians going about their lives. The pace is brisk but not overwhelming, and it's easy for them to find one of the secondary shops Eames had researched beforehand.

Their third stop is seedy, and Eames seems almost perversely charmed by the bearded, leather-encased stereotype even as Arthur all but drags him out the door. Back at the second shop, where a young woman with body modifications and intriguing ink on her shoulders raises her brows at their return, Eames asks to see some portfolios and sits down. He hardly looks at them, however, his eyes instead straying to the arms of the woman at the counter.

Arthur notes this, and asks to see her own work, and if the artist who inked her works in the same shop. They're introduced to her own portfolio and a taller, skinnier man who looks of Inuit descent. Eames takes his time, discusses the lines of the girl's shoulders as she pulls at the edges of her sleeveless shirt and explains the inspiration behind the strokes while the other artist asks Eames what his own ideas are.

Arthur sits, back, not a little entertained, and when he thinks to break in and ask how they do their ink, the girl says they use needles and have the papers to back up their safety practices. Eames will have to fill out some electronic forms, which Arthur has accounted for, and he'll have to submit to a quick blood test, which Arthur had asked Yusuf about in a quick message. As long as the test only screens for social and bloodborne diseases, Eames'll be fine.

Eames shows them his scar, and they discuss that for a while. Eames shoots Arthur a bemused look over their bent heads when they take note of the scar's apparent age. The artists discuss possible distortions of any art around it and how it may prove difficult to work with, and slowly Eames shifts from the idea of putting ink there to choosing something smaller, "just to start."

He ends up face-down and shirtless on a table in one of the parlor's rooms, and he has to keep moving his left shoulder as the male artist directs. The girl is back out front, while Arthur is allowed to stand with his arms crossed and hold up the wall of the shop, watching the needle work ink into Eames' skin. He sweats, a little, and he bleeds, and he hisses, and says it's amazing.

Eames' tattoo, manually applied, takes a couple hours. It's the filling more than anything that takes the time, going over twice to get the right darkness between the outline. When the artist is done, he has Arthur hold a small mirror so Eames can see the finished product in the big one he's facing.

Eames wears a small bandage made from some breathable polymer under his shirt, and they detour from their path back to the transit hub for lunch. The artist had told Eames he'd need to wear the bandage for a day, maybe dress the area again as needed, but Eames is healed within the hour, and he only keeps the bandage on to remind himself of the unique form of pain that had put ink under his organic skin. He has to keep his own synthetic systems from triggering a rejection reaction that would bleed the ink from his skin into and then out of his pores like sweat.

Arthur finds them a vendor with food that's more or less trustworthy, and they eat on the way back. Eames' lips form a small expression somewhere between a smile and a smirk, and Arthur can tell he's happy. Eames even says he likes his 'first' tattoo, but he already has an idea for more. "Down the road," he says, grinning when Arthur gently shoves into him. "Don't want to go becoming a ruffian all at once."

\- -

Eames changes into a blue button-down shirt that's a bit form-fitting. He knows Arthur is off prettying himself up again, and Eames wants to look good for him. He asked to stop for a haircut, and now he's got a little product in there, less advanced than Arthur's, but it achieves the look he's going for. The skin on his face and neck is smooth, because Eames has shaved and retarded the growth of his stubble (something he delights in cultivating otherwise, simply because he can). Eames wants to look good not just _for_ Arthur, but with him, tonight when they go to Arthur's mysterious dinner.

Eames expects they'll be meeting Yusuf again, and with all the gravitas Arthur seems to be attaching to this upcoming event, Eames feels nervous. It's a little odd, because there's a part of him that says Arthur seems to be making a mountain over something that might not be justified. Still, there's something in the way he's looked at Eames today, when he was lying on his front and relishing the feel of a needle pricking his skin at speed, when Arthur thought he didn't observe him in turn. The area around Arthur's eyes has been tight, the corners of his mouth battened down.

Eames checks his collar and cuffs on the mirror of his bathroom, and on impulse he unbuttons and rolls his sleeves to his elbows. He pats at his hair, then decides to stop messing about. He checks his belt, his gray slacks that he'd bought with Arthur's money and permission ("Take the chit, and only use it in the stores I told you,"), his shoes. He makes a funny expression at himself, raising an eyebrow. He cleans up pretty well, all told.

Eames meets Arthur in the foyer, and again Arthur is dressed to the nines. Eames is reasonably certain those are cufflinks in French cuffs. He’s never really seen Arthur like this before, out of context of the flat, truly clean-cut. Eames has seen him loose, easy, when he hasn’t shaved for a few days (Eames _loves_ Arthur in scruff, there’s something so delightfully lazy about it) and he’s heard Arthur call a plant a drama queen aloud, has had Arthur not mock him in turn for talking to Eames’ own favorite members of their little patch of greenery.

This Arthur isn't the same. There's a wall there, not just between the two of them, but between Arthur and the world, between Arthur and his own secrets.

Eames wants to say something, to force Arthur to break the silence, but he doesn't. He's not sure if it makes him a coward or if Arthur is. They leave, and they don't speak the entire way to Arthur's destination.

\- -

Arthur takes them to a posh restaurant, ordering a cab. They rise higher than Eames has been before, going to the city proper, bypassing transit and moving through buildings just beginning to awaken, the lights in their windows flickering to life as the dying rays of the sun glitter on glass. Cars and cabs alike pass them, over, under, beside. Arthur sits straight and silent next to him, and Eames mirrors him while keeping an overtly lazy eye out the window, drinking it all in with a growing sense of dread.

Their goal is a modestly tall edifice just off city center, shy of the few remaining green parks within the realm of towers and concrete. The cab leaves them at a stop on one of the upper floors, and Eames follows Arthur to the lifts, where they head down instead of up. Arthur--he's wearing a mask, Eames realizes, when they debark onto a level full of well-dressed people, human staff, low lighting. There are a lot of black dresses and suits, candlelight simulated and real. The murmur of conversation is low, and the air is cool. The ceiling is high above, and Eames carefully doesn't gawk as Arthur is greeted by the host at the front kiosk. Dim lights are hung by single dark strands all the way from the top of the restaurant, giving the illusion of moving under the stars as they're led to their seats.

The table is round, large enough for four. Arthur pauses, and somewhat awkwardly gestures Eames to a seat. Instead of sitting next to him or directly across, Arthur chooses an angle, unbuttoning his suit jacket but leaving it on as he sits down. Eames places both of his arms on the table, then on his lap so as to avoid the table settings. A waiter comes by to offer drinks, and Arthur politely declines.

When they're alone once more, Eames feels his brow furrow, and he says, "Arthur--"

"I'm sorry, Eames," Arthur says, the tone of his voice...sad, but off. Guilt--that's what Eames has been reading off Arthur today, and it's wrong, it doesn't fit and Eames won't accept it. Eames doesn't like this space Arthur's put between them one bit, the way he's suddenly pulled back like he's done something to earn Eames' anger or otherwise--

"You don't get to act like an injured party when all you've ever told me is _nothing,"_ Eames hisses, his voice carefully modulated and his facial expressions exquisitely controlled. Eames’ anger surprises him, how quickly it bubbles to the surface, how he hides it instinctually. To anyone outside of their table, they're maybe having a lover's tiff at most, a quiet conversation otherwise.

"I haven't told you what you deserve to know," Arthur replies, evenly. "That changes tonight."

"You could bloody well start now," Eames says, leaning back and glancing about the room with a nonchalance he doesn't feel. When his eyes flicker back to Arthur he catches it, something under the surface of Arthur's skin. Arthur looks like he's holding himself together by will alone, as though he's already been dealt a blow that's spidered cracks all through his self and it's just the skin, just the outside, that looks calm. Now that Eames knows to look for it, it's there for him to see.

He has something of a revelation, then; humanity, being human, is a lot like wearing a different mask depending on where you are. Eames desperately wants to see Arthur the way he knows him, without pretense or facades. He wants to see him at ease, like he is at home, their home, but more--maybe Eames wants to push him, like he is now, force him to drop this mask, see him more raw.

Eames finds himself fidgeting, almost by reflex. He touches his napkin, blinks, licks his lips and shows a bit of his crooked teeth when he speaks. He feels his lips purse in genuine irritation, and wonders how much of this he's been picking up by watching people, watching Arthur, watching movies and surfing the nets and learning how to present his very own facsimile of humanity.

He's about to ask Arthur what they're bloody waiting for when Arthur looks over Eames' shoulder, and that hidden breakage is in his eyes. Eames wants to play it cool, so he doesn't look until whomever it is approaching arrives at their table, and then Arthur stands so Eames does too. Arthur looks like he's going to extend a chair in gentlemanly fashion, so Eames thinks, _it can't be Yusuf,_ and he turns around to offer his own polite introduction.

She's tall, wearing heels, and beautiful in a shattering way. Her wide-set eyes punch straight through Eames and it isn't until she speaks that the shock really hits him, and he feels as though his entire body, organic and synthetic components alike, has turned to ice.

She doesn't greet them, doesn't acknowledge Arthur, just looks at him with those piercing, round eyes.

"Very good," Mal says, "you come off just as human as Arthur."

\- -

Arthur watches Eames, and Eames watches Mal. Mal watches them both, notes that Eames--she's always hated calling him anything other than his name, even when that was merely an alphanumeric designation--Eames seems to recognize her, even if he doesn't realize it. She begins to see the effects of Arthur's theft, the poor memory wipe, the removal of Eames' memory control core. Eames is much smaller than when she last saw him, saw his entire unit lined up in their containers, restrained, staring ahead at nothing, breathing evenly and silently--until Arthur pressed buttons, one by one.

"I've brought what you asked for," she says to Arthur, still looking at Eames. He's collected himself, somewhat, but he appears unnerved each time she speaks, and his gaze shifts from her to Arthur often. "I feel it's a rather barbaric way of getting what you want."

Eames looks sharply at her in reaction to her tone, but Mal will make no apologies. If this is how Arthur chooses to reveal this truth to Eames, so be it.

"Arthur took quite the risk when he freed you," Mal says.

Eames' voice is flat, and he's looking at her with something nearing hostility. "How so."

"Either it would have worked, as it has, or you would have died."

Eames blinks. Arthur says nothing. Mal can't help but put teeth in her next words. "I'm not going to sit here and watch you two say nothing. I am not going to be the one to reveal your grand answers, Arthur. We go to your home, and we do it there." She stands decisively, and Arthur catches himself and fumbles to follow. Eames stands too, and he looks numb, like he's not sure what to feel. To Mal, he appears as human as anyone in the room, as fallible as her Arthur.

"And what exactly are we revealing, my love?" Eames asks, and Mal pauses, takes a moment to regard him. He's somewhat regained his feet, and it appears he's just as stubborn as her Arthur, too. Mal allows herself a small smile, because that's not something Eames learned from Arthur. "I'm glad you're here," is all she says, before turning and leaving the restaurant, trusting her wayward men to follow her.

\- -

"You've told me more than nothing," Eames murmurs quietly to Arthur in the back of the cab Mal hailed. Arthur shakes his head minutely. "I don't want an apology," he begins, and Eames stops him by taking his hand. Arthur starts, and pulls away a little. Eames tightens his grip. Before he can speak, Mal calmly says, "Arthur killed your entire line, one by one." Arthur flinches, and Eames says "I know this," but Mal ignores them both. "Arthur then risked his life to save yours." She turns her head slowly from the front seat, and the city lights make her eyes otherworldly.

Neither Eames nor Arthur say anything for the rest of the trip home, though Eames refuses to release Arthur's hand.

\- -

"Thank you for coming here," Arthur tells Mal when the door to the flat shuts behind them. He's stiff, awkward, and Mal bluntly says, "Stop it, Arthur. You will not speak to me in this way." She moves sharply, her bearing giving her more authority and the set of her shoulders speaking of more confidence than her high heels or severe beauty ever could. Eames is fascinated by her, in the way he supposes a man would be by a spider, or another beautiful, dangerous creature.

Eames stays standing by the foyer while Arthur watches Mal move through the flat like she's been there before, straight to the media center. Arthur seems to push himself into motion, and he joins Mal as she removes something from her small bag, an equally small storage cell measuring a centimetre on each side. It's largely clear, with slight iridescence when the light catches it just right. Eames shifts the gain on his optics, and sees that emits a slight ultraviolet signature.

"Stream it to the display, please," he hears Arthur murmur, and Mal seems irritated and sad at the same time. Eames can't place her, can't figure out why he's got such a strong gut-reaction to her or why she's behaving as she is. Arthur takes off his jacket and drapes it over one of the chairs by their new table, somewhat carelessly, though he looks at it for a time.

Eames suddenly isn't sure he wants to know what is contained within that tiny cube, but Arthur's already unspooling a thin cable from Mal's hand, and then he's rolling up his sleeves, and Mal is turning on the display which shows only a blank standby screen. Then Mal and Arthur have no more preparations to make, no more idle motions or distractions, and Mal looks at Arthur, and Arthur looks at Eames.

It feels like his feet belong to someone else, like his sensory inputs have disconnected from his physical body. He steps to the couches, and sits down on the long one, perpendicular to the screen. He looks at the innocuous little cube on the coffee table, at the thin cable lying next to it. Without prompting from Arthur or Mal, he reaches for the male end of the cable. It's shaped like a needle, a cannula, more accurately, and Eames holds it between a thumb and forefinger. "What am I going to find in here?" he asks, surprised to hear his own voice quiet and unsteady.

"Files from Fischer-Morrow, freshly stolen," Mal says. Arthur says, "Memories."

Eames looks at him. "How so?"

Arthur glances at the screen, which has gone to its virtual aquarium idle mode. "We'll see video feeds, data streams--whatever it is you access. But you'll likely be able to directly interface with the memory fragments stored inside the cube." He pauses, and finally makes himself meet Eames' eyes. "You'll be able to--relive them."

Eames looks at Arthur, at this person he thought he was learning, this person he wants to know, this man he wants to touch once more. "Will I find you in here?"

"Yeah," Arthur says, flat. "I'm in there."

"Let's not drag this out," Mal says, and she touches the top surface of the cube. It lights up ever so slightly from within, waking up, and the other end of the cable neatly fits itself to the cube's side like a magnet. Eames looks down at the cannula in his hand, and then at Arthur, raising a brow he doesn't really feel.

Arthur sits heavily next to Mal, and she gives him a look. Eames turns his attention to his own hand, and notes it's shaking a little.

He pushes the cannula into a prominent vein on the back of his left hand, and it hurts. He slides it further, until he touches the new synthetic nerve in the arm, and then he shuts his eyes and falls into a dream, awakens to a nightmare.

 

* * *

 

Nothing is as it should be.

Eames is one hundred seventy-seven and a half centimetres tall. No, he’s--he’s one hundred and eighty-eight. He weighs a little better than seventy-seven kilos, but--this is wrong, he’s heavier, denser, nearer to sixteen stone. His head is cold, his hair. He’s.

Trapped. Iron--metal--bars, no, solid--he’s held in place, barely has room for his chest to expand. He’s breathing hard, harsh, through the thing covering his face, feeding him--stale, cold, it scrapes his lungs, and those too feel wrong, different, mechanically regulated. He fights them, he’s breathing faster but he’s fighting himself, he can feel the _foreignness_ of the structures inside his body, heavy and chill and artificial.

His arms, his limbs, his body is heavy and everything is sluggish, except it’s so regimented, his heartbeat--the circulatory unit in his chest, thudding, even, slow. He blinks--his eyes, he can see, but he can’t see. His vision swims.

He’s an android. An experimental model AD-30, fourth generation, tapped for a specialty assignment that--

He’s special.

His name is. He has no name. He is a fourth-generation AD-30 in name only, taken aside with nine of his brothers--

He has no brothers. He is one of ten. Units that began humbly, a standalone variant of the AD-30IV, with a new designation in hexadecimal--

He doesn’t know the meaning of humility. He is not humble. He is not special. He is.

He is AD-30IV-E0F5M3, and his--the others are E0F5M0, -M1, -M2, and so on until -M9, which is not in hexadecimal, but he does not question. He is obedient.

He is M3, no different than M5 or M7 or M8, except. M8, M8 was--is the reason that he is here, that they are. He is.

Cadeirydd. He is. His name is not his, he did not choose it, he has nothing to choose, it is not his to choose. He is capable, he is adaptable, he is obedient.

The name means nothing. He has no meaning outside of what is assigned, it doesn’t matter what some, some man in a white coat chooses to call him, some _little man_ who thinks--

He does not think.

His hands know the weight of weapons. His optics know the analysis and tracking of targets, his processors and neural interfaces know the digestion of information and prioritization of objectives based upon the mission parameters delivered--

He is cold.

He is Cadeirydd.

He is alive.

He is Cadeirydd, an AD-30IV, designation E0F5M3, and he is afraid.

\- -

There’s a man. He’s smaller in stature, his shoulders show the vulnerable line of his neck. The vertebrae there, C2 and C3, they are ideal for severing the connection of the spinal cord.

M3 is held in place. They’ve made a cage, thinking to contain he and his brothers. M8 had spoken out of turn, had been the first to make M3 question. M3 did not understand--he wasn’t meant to, but he wanted to. This was outside parameters, and it was frustrating. He wanted to understand. He wanted to know. He wanted to know _why._

This cage, it interfaces with M3’s body. The mechanical components. His synthetic systems, his mind yet remains his, but the invasive connections pierce his skin, cause it to redden and become inflamed. He registers pain, but it is dulled, a kind of pressure, of distant discomfort.

M3 is being fed something through this mechanism upon his face, covering his organic nose, his mouth. It is chill on his teeth, porous and constructed as they are of a human osseous analogue, and it slows his organics, makes them languid. His musculature, dense, reinforced with synthetic fibrous stimulant lattice, it is heavy, weighs him down.

The coolant circulates through his body, beat. Beat. Beat. In his organic veins, a simulacra of blood cells, hormones, mineral ions, proteins flow, glucose and antioxidants and amine-tyrosine and epinephrines, norepinephrines, testosterone and adrenaline, skeletal response triggers, lactic acid inhibitors, androgens and a flood of serotonin and prolactin, a surge that smothers, that makes his eyelids droop, that sends off signals, reactions in his brain, his mind, that he doesn’t understand.

M3 loses the outside world, for a while, but his systems are still his, he can count, can take stock, can see what they’re doing. They’re making him placid, slowing him down, they’ve got he and his brothers, they’re in these cages, strapped and restrained.

M8 shouldn’t have, he shouldn’t have, but he did, and a small part of M3, perhaps it’s always been there, it agrees with him.

M3 feels something, a shock, base of his neck, his spine, the interface there is forced, it’s a blade, a needle, sharp, and it pushes into him, and it is joined by something larger, his back, in the low lumbar region, forcing into his charging port, his interface, it’s--

“What is your designation?”

M3 opens his eyes.

His mouth forms the words vocalized by his organic vocal cords, artificially amplified, muffled through the gaseous-feed mask. “AD-30IV, E0F5M3.”

“What is your unit designation?”

M3 blinks. “No data.”

Before him, there’s a man, modest in stature, white coat, dark hair, brown eyes, cervical vertebra C3, vertebrae C2 and C3, sever.

“I dunno,” the man says, and he’s looking at something else. M3’s optics blur.

“What is your designation?” The voice seems to come from the side, in front, the other side.

M3’s mouth opens. His tongue feels heavy, clumsy.

“M3.”

There’s a pause, two seconds and eight tenths, half a breath, a heartbeat, slow and painful.

“You guys getting this? Hey. You.” The man, he snaps his fingers in front of M3’s face, reaching up, M3 is suspended. “What is your designation.”

“M3.”

The man frowns. “What’s he saying?”

There’s another voice, tinny. Broadcast. Intercom. “He’s saying something in Welsh.”

“The fuck?” The man comes close to him, and M3’s eyes swim before he can focus. He blinks, and the man--he takes a step back. “Is he...is he okay?”

“Ask it again, please.” The intercom is annoyed. M3 identifies the emotion--heightened emotional response, as if to an irritant. The man before him speaks again, slower. Unsure, exercising caution. The beginnings of--

“Designation.”

“M3.”

“What is he saying? I can’t understand this shit.”

M3 jolts in his restraints, eyes flying open. Everything is sharp, too bright for his optics. His systems are flooded, the data bottlenecks and he cannot stop what they take.

“M3’s respiration is speeding up. Why can’t you people keep them regulated? Check M5.” Intercom. Barking. Orders.

“M5 is fine, what’s wrong with him?”

“That’s what we pay you for, isn’t it? He is not a _he._ Figure it out and get it noted so we can get this done already.”

M3 hears. The man in front of him moves, M3’s eyes, his optics are overwhelmed, but the heat signature, the electrical impulses that signify life, they turn, and the man’s voice is something M3 can attach himself to.

“Hey, asshole, I’m not the one who fucked this up. I’m here to find out what _you_ guys fucked up and get it fixed--”

“Remember your pay grade, desk jockey. The decision’s been made. This line’s done. We need to know what went wrong, and yes, that is _your_ job. So shut up and fucking do it.”

Silence, for a time, but not. Coolant is pumped, lungs expand, oxygen is transferred and data is lost.

M3. His designation is E0F5M3. He is an AD-30IV, he is.

His name. He has a name. It’s not his, but--

He has a name. He can’t remember it.

\- -

“Why is he saying shit in Welsh? What is he even--ka-dayrith? I can’t pronounce that shit. How am I supposed to figure out--”

The readouts are going apeshit. Arthur leans closer, and he thinks he can see M3’s eyes moving rapidly under his lids. The android is breathing evenly, slowly, and his massive body is lax.

“Wait. The fuck, you’ve already started the wipe? What are you--what am I even doing here? Why am I asking questions he can’t answer?”

M3’s eyes fly open, and Arthur gasps despite himself, taking a step back. The android’s eyes are blank, staring at nothing, for a half-second, and then they shift precisely, focus on him, pupils pinning instantly and it makes a shiver run up Arthur’s spine.

The android--M3--says something. Arthur can’t see his mouth, because it’s covered, and it’s muffled, but it sounds like more Welsh. Arthur finds himself leaning forward, wary and a little intimidated, forgetting for a moment that the asshats in the observation box are breathing down his neck, forgetting that he’s got shit to do. “What?” he finds himself asking. The android’s eyes are greenish, in this light, surrounded by the dark metal-composite unit that contains M3 and the other nine, all in a curved row extending three androids to M3’s right, and six to his--its left.

M3 says something else, slow, muddled.

“He’s asking who you are,” Mal says from next to him, and Arthur about leaps from his skin.

“Jesus, Mal. The fuck is going on here?” He hisses it, because the dicks in the ob bay are watching. Mal holds up a hand, though, and Arthur hopes it buys them a couple minutes.

“They’re wiping the line, Arthur,” Mal says, moving next to him and looking up at M3 while brandishing her datapad. M3’s gaze is still focused on Arthur, absolutely steady, and it’s more than a little unnerving for all that his speech is slurred. “M8 was out of line, and it was the last thing they needed. Too much money has been poured into this project.” Her voice is too even.

“They based it off of a too-old model, what were they after? Stability is one thing, but their goals are just outside the reach of--I mean, your synthesis of organics and the wetware, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. But even the AX-400s are light-years more advanced than this...heap.” Arthur makes as if to kick at the container holding M3, but Mal’s hand on his upper arm stops him. She’s digging her nails in, and he looks at her in confusion.

She’s looking up at M3, and her eyes are sad. Arthur never understood that, her attachment. It’s his job to find flaws in these machines, and that’s all they are--designed for specific duties, they’re not--

“Mal,” Arthur says.

Mal says something, in what Arthur assumes is Welsh, and M3’s eyes snap to her. His brows twitch, and Arthur realizes they’re furrowing, by millimeters, and it’s just that, this shade of emotion, that shakes something loose in Arthur--he just doesn’t know it, then.

The intercom burps his name, and Arthur jumps. He glares at the ob bay, and the R&D guy inside says, “Just plug in, and save it to a read-only. We’ll do the rest. Then go down the line and shut ‘em down.”

Arthur resists the urge to give him the finger. He halts the wipe manually, fuck the guys in the bay, and sets M3’s interface on standby. He’s turning away from M3--it makes more sense to start at the other end of the line, doesn’t it--and ignores the muffled noise he thinks he maybe hears, heading down to M9. M9’s never said anything to anyone.

\- -

He had a name, it’s--it was there, but now it isn’t. He remembers that he had one. He doesn’t know why, but he feels sense of loss.

It wasn’t his name. He hadn’t chosen it, it--had been an insult, hadn’t it?

Why was he here?

There’s a presence. M3--that is his designation--opens his eyes.

Human, female. White coat. Hair pulled back. She is looking at him.

His chest rises, and it falls. He breathes, and he feels...sleepy.

He is tired.

“Forgive me,” the woman whispers, in French. She touches something, something on his...casing, his shell, and suddenly--

Anger. Confusion. Blankness. Anxiety. Conflicting inputs, multiple sources, emotional responses tied to human-derived hormones and organic components. M3 filters them. He identifies the others, recognizes them even as it is though he’s being introduced to them for the first time, and it’s like regaining something he hadn’t realized he’d--

M0, to his far right, is stoic, silent.

M8 is seething, he is angry.

M4 is to his immediate left, and he is. He is sleeping. M5, M6, they are simply waiting.

M9 is evaporating.

M3 can feel the shift in attention, their minds linking as one, reaching out, listening, hearing, and there’s nothing to hear.

M8’s systems register a spike, one M3 can almost--feel. He can almost taste metal in his mouth, feel the strain in his organic muscles as they fight the chemical and physical holds. There’s pain, but it’s distant, then it’s sharp, then it’s fuel, and the little _man,_ he _dares._

M8 is a fading scream in their minds, soundless, as powerful as he is brief, and then he’s gone, a hole, a lack.

M3 can feel the man’s approach, through M7’s eyes. There is something not quite resignation there, it’s too primitive to be an emotion. It is just a--feeling. M7 simply regards the man in the white coat, watches his arm rise to the side of the metal casing, listens to the minute haptic feedback of the man’s fingertip depressing a virtual button, and then M7 goes silent.

M6, M5, they are the same. The man doesn’t hesitate, he plugs his pad into their interfaces, they begin to fade in turn, and when it is complete the button is pressed, and M3’s world shrinks.

M4 slips away silently.

M3 realizes his coolant circulatory unit is contracting faster, outside the rigid parameters given by the shackles connected to him, and his respiration is more rapid than that of either M2 or M1. M0 remains steady in the background, and M3 reaches out to him, an instinctual, animal impulse.

The man and his white coat move past M3, where the woman is looking at his control interface but not using it, and M3 feels two things at once that do not make sense to him--relief, and guilt.

M2 issues a spike that M3 reads as epinephrine and another surge of serotonin, from the cage or M2 himself M3 doesn’t know. M3 can’t turn his head, but he tries, and then he can.

The man in the white coat is standing in front of M2, and his jaw is set tight, his lips in a thin line. His face is white like his coat, making his brows stand out, his dark hair that reaches his shoulders catches the fabric, his hands have long nimble fingers.

M2’s mouth opens unseen under his mask, and he makes a sound. The man in the white coat flinches, and he presses the button.

\- -

Arthur watches M2’s eyes flicker side to side. They’re open wide, the whites catching the light like anybody who is afraid to. To die.

They slow, M2 blinks several times, and then its head and eyes slowly swing forward. Its eyelids relax, but they don’t close.

Arthur can’t deny that there’s light fading, there, and he swallows hard. He forces himself to M1, and the android’s containment unit is making a sound. It takes a second for Arthur to place it as a rattle, and another--he’s already plugging in, downloading, wiping--when he realizes it’s because M1 is shaking.

Arthur swallows hard again, then harder, because he can’t get any moisture in his throat and his chest is dry and tight and he thinks he might throw up if he doesn’t just shut off his brain. M1 is blinking faster than M2, but he’s--it’s looking at Arthur, not at his eyes, but somewhere near his throat, like he’s--afraid to look up and see--

Arthur reaches for the button and M1’s eyes squeeze shut and even though its face is almost covered by the gas-feed mask, it’s as human as anything Arthur’s ever seen.

M1’s head hangs, and its expression eases into nothing, and Arthur forces one leg forward, then another.

He’s in front of M0 when it speaks. It’s in Welsh, and the voice is perfectly modulated, quiet but audible. It meets Arthur’s eyes evenly, and it doesn’t blink at all. Its eyes are grey-green.

Arthur stares, feels himself plugging his pad in, transferring, beginning the wipe. M0 maintains eye contact the entire time, and awareness remains with it, right up until Arthur feels himself raise his index finger, touching it to the screen, and the vibration issues with the press.

M0’s eyes don’t close, its head doesn’t move. It just stares at Arthur until it is staring at nothing, and Arthur is staring at something inert.

Arthur doesn’t know how long he’d have kept standing there if he didn’t register an acrid scent, one he immediately recognizes somewhere in his gut. His eyes fall down, then to his right, at the bottom of M1’s container. It’s wet.

Arthur’s chest spasms, and then M3 says something.

Arthur blinks, and suddenly his lungs are working again. He gulps air, like a fish, and the scent hits him all the harder. They’d been feeding them with nutrient-heavy supplements, it would cause the scent, with the organics, that makes sense, otherwise why would they even, it’s not efficient, it’s wasteful and one of the most unnecessary things to have a solder-android even do--

M3 says something else, and Arthur can almost make it out. The tone oddly makes him think of Cobb on the phone--sad, maybe drunk. Arthur walks to him, doesn’t look at M1 or M2. M3 says it again when he’s closer, and once more, a little less muddy, when Arthur is in front of him--it, looking up at clear, intelligent eyes.

“Why?”

Arthur blinks, and steps back.

“Arthur,” Mal says quietly. “It’s the kindest thing you can do for them.”

Arthur is rooted in place, but he says to her, incredulous. “These are _your projects,_ Mal, how can you say that?”

M3 makes a noise like a cough. Its eyes are no less afraid than M2’s or M1’s, as frighteningly aware as M0 and M8. It coughs, gives a faltering blink, and Arthur is horrified as M3’s eyes grow brighter, grow moist.

“Please,” it says.

 

* * *

 

 There’s static, of all things, then the blankness of no input on the screen. Arthur isn’t looking at it.

He’s looking at Eames.

Eames’ eyes are open, were open, and now they’re on Arthur’s, and it’s a gut-shock, a look that hasn’t changed since Arthur first saw it: confusion, fear, a lack of understanding that is so base it’s elevated beyond what most people are capable of feeling today. The question still there, still raw. _Why._

Arthur finds himself frozen in place, hardly able to move his eyes though he wants to blink badly, and he can see Eames’ mouth, half-open and shaking a little, tremors in his jaw, the twitch of his nostrils and his eyes--those are the same.

Eames stands suddenly, and Arthur starts. He’s barely aware of Mal beside him, of the room, of anything as the cube drags across the coffee table and the cable, the needle is torn from Eames’ hand. Eames doesn’t look at him, but stalks off to his bedroom, and Arthur’s pretty sure he imagines seeing a drop of his blood fall to the carpet, but it’s there, later, when he checks.

He sits on the couch, so still because he feels like he might shake apart. He hadn’t thought--he hadn’t thought. He knew this--he should have known--

“Arthur,” Mal says, softly, and it shatters something. He blinks back to himself, and realizes he can’t stop blinking. He can’t quite breathe, and beside him Mal is there, her neck is there, and if Arthur buries his face in it he’s going to lose his shit, so he gets to his feet too, knees wobbling for a second then steady, body numb. He can’t feel.

“I,” he says. He swallows, but his throat is thick. He doesn’t know if he should follow Eames or give him space, he doesn’t know what to do, and Mal isn’t telling him.

\- -

Mal stands next to Arthur, but after a brief moment she leaves him for the kitchen counter. She wants to grip the edges of the stone in her palms, feel the coolness and hardness against the bones beneath her flesh. She wants to grit her teeth, perhaps to scream. She’s in the kitchen but Arthur’s open-plan apartment is too near, too close, and when she senses him move she does grip the counter hard, and she feels one of her fingernails bend.

The pain centers her, and Arthur sildes open a patio door, goes outside into the night, and he leaves the door open. She can imagine him headed for a secluded spot in his garden, or perhaps the edge of the roof, seeking air.

The kitchen isn’t far enough.

Mal goes to Arthur’s bedroom, moves to his window beyond the bed and its slate-colored duvet, bathed in the faint blue light from the building across. Glass shelves to her left pick up the light, faintly, and the edge of something catches her eye.

Suspended in silence, the inert memory control core of one AD-30IV-E0F5M3 stands inert, encased in glass, a blade without an edge.

Mal stands in front of Arthur’s window, unseeing through the glass, and feels older. She puts her hand to her mouth, her eyes grow hot and fill, so she shuts them hard and weeps silently.

\- -

His bed is adequate. It’s comfortable, perhaps by typical standards. It’s sized large enough for him, though he thinks perhaps he’d like to sprawl more. But it’s a bed, more than he would have had if--.

He doesn’t have a window, and he thinks now maybe he’d like one. It makes him imagine his orchid on the shelf of his modest dresser, and he halts that thought, thinks instead of the bath he’s claimed as his own, on the other side of the hall. It has a high window of occluded glass, one that can be tilted open to let in fresh air.

He has the use of the kitchen, a modestly-outfitted thing for making fresh pasta, dishes with farmer’s market vegetables, comfort foods with lots of cheese. There’s a kettle that has its own burner and lives there when it’s not in use, a collection of teas that began as a single tin of loose-leaf Earl Grey. There are grapes in the fridge more often than not, given the season. There’s a string of garlic by the small window over the sink, and a few itty bitty pots of succulents that soak up the sun’s rays there on the sill.

There’s a pair of matched couches that are perfectly long enough for him to recline upon, but the loveseat more often sees him sprawled over it, facing the media center, idly watching virtual fancy goldfish bubble around a virtual environment. There are plants in pots and containers inside, bracketing the long patio glass sliders that lead to a beautiful rooftop garden, one that includes a modest greenhouse that is constructed not for the point of having exotic pretentious orchids, but for the joy of the plants themselves.

The apartments are far less what someone of Arthur’s former stature can afford, offer comfort and essentials together, along with the roof space. If Arthur had wanted, he could own a house just beyond the median by contemporary standards. Arthur could entertain any number of whimsies, construct a grand conservatory or an indoor solarium, stone construction, genuine exotic wood flooring. Eames can picture Arthur in such a state, but the Arthur he sees in his mind’s eye doesn’t stand quite as tall, is a little rounder about the face, and his hair is longer, gently curled at the ends, his face younger and less lined.

The Arthur Eames knows, the one he knows now, he’s thinner, the planes of his face more severe. He wears clothes that he likes, whether they’re sharp or comfortable. He touches the tails of his orchids, which is where Eames picked up the mannerism. He stops and considers things before speaking or acting, most of the time. He is very human and beautifully fallible.

He’s Arthur. He’s the man who risked everything he had to spirit an android away from the grasp of Fischer-Morrow and flee the country, assume a new identity and slide under the radar, carve a static existence for himself somewhere new and quiet.

He brought Eames with him. He didn’t say why, and perhaps hasn’t even asked himself. He just acted, and it’s something Eames can’t fault him for.

Arthur, the man who once wore a coat with his name and position on a little holographic plate above the breast. The man who went about his job of quality control without batting an eyelash, sending defective units back to their origins when something was amiss. The man who once killed nine of Eames’ brothers is the same man who woke up in that cold room in one of Fischer-Morrow’s largest UK-based facilities. He’s the man who opened his eyes after being willingly blind, he’s the man who kissed Eames on the lips a scant night previous, one whose face felt so very fragile under Eames’ fingers.

Arthur doesn’t belong to Eames, and Eames does not belong to Arthur. Arthur’s given him use of most of the apartment, or apartments, or flat--whatever Arthur wants to call it. Arthur’s given him an orchid, a room and outlet to charge with, a bed to sleep on, a quaint clawfoot to bathe in. Arthur hasn’t quite given him his freedom, but Eames believes that’s only because Arthur doesn’t have the ability to do so.

Somehow, Eames knows. If he has a gut, it’s in there. If Arthur could, Arthur would free him in a second, a moment without stopping to think.

This is why Eames decides to stay. Not because he’d be at risk should he leave, or because he feels he owes Arthur something.

Arthur is human, flawed and precious, and Eames is already knows the feel of his pulse under his fingers, there below his jaw. The beats are quicker and fluttery when Arthur inhales, slower and stronger as he exhales. Arthur’s eyes are older than his face, lines about them and shades within them that have aged Arthur since the memories Eames has just tasted. Layers have been stripped away, leaving something behind that’s sharper and more vulnerable.

Eames wants to put his lips there, beneath Arthur’s jaw, just near to his ear. He wants to put his nose into Arthur’s neck and inhale, to push analysis to the back of his mind and just breathe Arthur in, surround himself in his scent. He wants to see Arthur undone, whether with the iron-tang of sweat or the simple enjoyment of Arthur in flannel pants and a moth-eaten tee, unshaven and half-asleep across the loveseat.

What he has, here, isn’t something he can quantify or categorize. It simply is, something to be discovered and experienced as each day, each hour goes by. Eames recognizes that he has something to call his own, an intangible that can’t be named. He thinks Arthur knows this too, it’s something he has at the same time, and perhaps it will be something they have together.

For now, Eames sits on his bed. He allows emotions, thoughts, processes to run over one another. As an android, he can move through the memories and experiences and processes in the blink of an eye, but as a thinking being, emotions and thoughts don’t work the same way. They’re fast, to be certain, but they also linger. They can’t just be noted, experienced, and then filed away, placed into a virtual box in his head, among bio-synthetic neurons or stored in solid-state media.

The fear he can taste as if it was yesterday. Eames recognizes that he thinks in idioms, that his vocabulary is colloquial, that even his accent can be narrowed down into a dialect and traced to a locality. He doesn’t know what part of him is human, or just an imitation of all he’s learned and absorbed--or even what comes from his supposedly-wiped core programming, the seed that sets a part of his base, of what (dare he say, who) he is.

The anger is there, too, a shadow of righteous anger at the loss of his brothers, mixed in with heavy, suffocating grief that somehow comes and goes. It threatens to overwhelm him, this renewed feeling of a gaping loss that becomes less, perhaps as his mind’s attempt at an emotional anaesthetic.

There isn’t really understanding. He knows on a basic level that Arthur was doing his job, but something else, perhaps deeper even than the ones and zeroes that theoretically are all that should make up his being, he knows that he believes there is never an excuse for the reckless elimination of sentience. Eames hasn’t really ever _believed_ in anything before, outside of just how dark his tea should be brewed or how much cheese should go into a baked pasta dish, why he loves a particular shade of orange and likes a particular old film about an adventurer in a fedora beyond all reason.

(Arthur loves the entire series of films, and will happily watch them repeatedly with Eames.)

(Arthur brews Eames’ tea almost perfectly. He never quite adds enough sugar.)

(Arthur makes amazing cheesy pasta bakes. Eames loves them, even though his body doesn’t process all the cheese.)

Most of all, and surprising to Eames himself, he feels sorrow. Perhaps it’s a remnant of M0. The first of the ten speaks again in Eames’ mind, his memory, looking down at Arthur in his coat, voice even.

_I pity you._

Eames will grieve anew for his brothers, and for what he himself has lost. He will grieve for Arthur, for what they may have if only they try. Eames figures that’s what it is to be alive, to be human--to give it a shot, as it were. He’ll try. He recognizes that the outcome isn’t predictable, for himself, for Arthur. Eames is willing to try.

The grief is present, the anger, and still the fear. The sorrow or pity or whatever it is, it mixes in, rational or otherwise. Eames accepts this.

Forgiveness, however. That he’s not quite ready to contemplate, not just yet. Not while the faces of his brothers

_You didn’t have that face._

all the same, just as he himself looked. They breathed, they felt and questioned

_They never showed that they were aware, not like you_

as he did, perhaps even before he did, M8 was the one

_diagnostics all showed the same potential fault_

who began it all, in Eames’ new memories. There are more memories, in that cube, and Eames recognizes that things occurred during his origins and programming and training that Arthur was not privy to, but until Arthur is willing to sit in front of him, look him in the eye, and speak the truth from his own lips to Eames’ ears, the forgiveness will remain an unknown.

\- -

The railing is cold, though the night is mild.

Summer's being coy, half-arrived but leaving the door open and letting chilly winds blow. Around him, leaves offer susurrations, whispering secrets he only partially knows.

Arthur's still numb, but he wants to think, to absorb what he's seen. The memories in his head--he wonders if they're as fresh as Eames', who just relived them as if he was in the moment for the first time. Arthur selfishly wonders what Eames sees when he looks at him, when he thinks of him.

Arthur wants to feel something more, to grasp even a shard of his near-loss of control on the couch. He wants to break down, let it out, and feel better, maybe to scream into the night and expunge his anger and pretend he's not full of self-pity. He remembers what it was to shrug, punch in his passcodes, take his notes and submit his reports with thoughts only of who he'd take home on the weekend, if he wanted, or what he'd pick up to eat.

Arthur doesn't know quite who he is, now. He doesn't know if he's left the self-concerned asshole he was behind, or if he's just pretending now. He doesn't know if he's removed something from himself or if he's just straight up less, a shade that's an imitation of both the original and unable to be whatever it is he thinks he's aspiring to.

Eames. It's really the only thought that can push past the selfishness and feels right to think, with the cold wind biting his cheeks. Eames is worth...worth anything, really. Worth trying for, worth being melodramatic over, worth making fattening foods and running at night and being an idiot just to see him smile.

Arthur's fucked and he knows it, and he's not worth Eames' time and he knows that too, but he figures he's got nothing to lose. It's really time he finds what he has to give.

Arthur's eyes sting a little, probably more from the wind and only a little from shame. Maybe he'll cry in the shower. Maybe he'll just keep feeling numb. Maybe he won't be able to leave behind who he was, but he can try. He can give it a shot.

It's a start.

 

* * *

 

They go to the Tower.

They haven’t said anything of any depth, really. Arthur’s been making an effort, and it’s almost painful to see it so visible as much as Eames feels--something. He doesn’t have the word. Heartened isn’t it, and it isn’t that Eames doesn’t appreciate that Arthur’s brewing of his tea in the morning, his offer of cooking--it simply isn’t the right word for what he feels watching it.

For all Eames knows, half the time he’s M3 with stray thoughts and memories, shredded half-emotions from his brothers flitting through his head.

He does look at Arthur differently, at first. He can’t quite reconcile the man with the one in the coat. Their attitudes are markedly different, though to be fair Eames has only ever seen Arthur in certain contexts, and the same could be said for how briefly he ‘saw’ him in the memory.

Eames hasn’t touched the cube. It sits there, on the coffee table. Arthur hasn’t turned on the media center, hasn’t watched the news or surfed. He’s just left the living area and the cube here like he feels he doesn’t have the right to touch it, like it’s some kind of self-harm, a wound he bears and leaves open because he’s--

Frankly, Eames thinks, it’s because he’s being an idiot. Eames doesn’t know if Arthur really does self-pity, and it doesn’t feel right. Perhaps he just thinks that this thing, whatever it is the cube represents, isn’t his to touch or alter or force. He’s given Eames over to doing the steering, but hell if Eames knows how to drive a bloody boat through dark waters.

Perhaps Eames is being a little ridiculous about things, too.

He hasn’t snapped at Arthur, or made snide comments, or really done anything but be a little quieter. He’s caught himself watching Arthur, as is his wont, but doing it more, and not being subtle about it. It makes Arthur uncomfortable, sometimes, and Arthur will do this odd flinch-twitch combination as though he wants to escape and then forcibly holds himself in place.

It’s driving Eames batshit, to use one of his favorite Arthurisms, so he throws in the towel one cloudy afternoon.

“Stop treating me like bloody glass,” he says. They’re in the kitchen area, and Eames is wiping down the pasta pot. Arthur is wrist-deep in soapy water, because he insists on hand-washing the cookware while letting the automatic washer do everything else.

Arthur’s hands still in the water, and he looks at Eames. Eames thinks Arthur can well read what’s on his face, because it’s been there and it’s common bloody sense. _Take me for who I am, for someone you know._ With all the time between them, Eames shouldn’t have to ask Arthur to treat him as a bloody person.

“I don’t know--” Arthur starts, and Eames’ lips twist. He can’t help it, though he thinks Arthur doesn’t deserve the expression, not this time. “I’m not good with. People,” Arthur says.

Something about the halting way Arthur speaks when he gets like this makes something inside Eames go soft, makes his mood lose its edge.

The cube ends up on the mantle under the media screen, after that. It’s there, the cable coiled neatly next to it, for him to use or leave as he pleases.

Eames leaves it there, for now.

\- -

They talk more.

Eames sometimes gets up first, makes their tea. Arthur hasn't had coffee in days, not since he picked one up when they left Mal off at the shuttle drop. Eames remembers that day, already warm, hardly a cloud though there was a breeze with the slightest of edges to it. It made for an oddly pleasing combination, the sun with summer intensity on his skin and the air taking little nips of him.

Eames decides he likes Mal, the morning when they're going to see her off. He's terrified of her, on some base level yet, but she is inevitable, the way a storm is, or the seasons. She's as human as anything, flawed and beautiful, different from Arthur and so very not.

He lets her touch his cheek the way he can see she wants to, even though he's not sure he wants her to. She might see this, and she might be selfish. Eames wishes Arthur would be selfish, sometimes.

She kisses Arthur's cheek, and murmurs more French, and then she's gone, an abrupt turn and a flash of her round eyes. For a moment, Eames is sure his and Arthur's hearts are beating equally hard. Then the moment is over, and Arthur clears his throat with an awkward grunt that turns into a cough, and Eames doesn't like how his steps are almost aimless, so Eames touches his elbow briefly and leads the way back to the transit stop.

They're standing there, dressed for the quick trip to the coastal shuttle port, Arthur in a long coat that should be too warm but for the breeze. The coat makes Eames want to fall in love with him, like a heroine from an old film. He can see it, if he closes his eyes, but he doesn't want to because he can imagine it just here, seeing the way the wind lifts and plays at the coattails. Arthur, standing on some precipice, some dramatic skyline behind him, wind in his hair, waiting.

"Let's go to the Tower," is what Eames says, and Arthur looks at him, and he says, his eyes dark and still shaped in a way that hurts Eames a little every time, Arthur says "Okay."

\- -

Arthur and Eames ride in silence, the tram mostly empty. Nobody's coming in from shuttles this early, they're all going out. Arthur's hands are cold, haven't warmed up since he got up this morning. Mal didn't say anything about it--his hands are often cold, especially in the winter--and she'd just taken them in hers, rubbed them when they rode the bus and then the tram to her gate.

Arthur misses Mal fiercely already, an ache he can identify. She's always made him feel young, stupid, and always a little sad for all that he loves her. It's the way he loves her, he figures--you can't love Mal except with everything you have, with your happiness and your sadness and your pain. She was always the same, back at Fischer-Morrow, always orderly yet with this glint in her eye that spoke of something beyond orderly hair and precise handwriting. The first time Arthur had been hit by a spitball--made from actual paper and, to this day, he thinks, actual spit--he'd looked up incredulously from his workstation and couldn't quite make sense of what he saw. Mal, halfway hunched over her own table like she's trying hard not to laugh, Mal looking like a kid with her terribly-concealed grin and the mischief in her eyes, never mind the plastic tube in her hands as a makeshift straw.

Mal is a rebel, was a pioneer for Fischer-Morrow. She was always pushing, finding new ways of doing things, finding new things to do that hadn't ever been done before. Mal always goes her own way, and after the modified AD-30IV project, that way was no longer where Fischer-Morrow was going. It had been coming, building, the way they would try to rein her in, would curtail her other projects or shoot down her ideas with "budget considerations" and "resource management" and "that's not the way we do things here, Miss Miles." So Mal had done what she did best--she'd flipped up her figurative skirts, raised her chin, and marched out the door. Mallorie Miles with the most amazing, frightening brain Arthur had ever known (perhaps next to Cobb; he'd always secretly wondered what sort of world-ending occurrence would take place if those two met. Arthur imagined that the collective everything would probably just throw its hands up and say, "give.") had marched out the doors of Fischer-Morrow, had returned to her France, her Paris, and begun pioneering things there. Presumably, this is where she met Ariadne and _that,_ as Arthur can attest to, is when things went a little sideways in the world.

Thinking of Ariadne brings Arthur back to the present, and he digs his phone out of his coat pocket, where he'd dropped it, careless. He wonders if Eames would have pickpocketed it, if things between them were good, were normal. He gets as far as his mail app when he remembers he can't contact her with this phone, and he stares at it for a second before he drops it back into the same pocket. He wants to ask her to visit, and maybe he's being clingy but he could just really use somebody right now. It's missing Mal and it's missing Ariadne and it's missing Eames, Eames who is sitting right next to him and looking across the tram, almost polite in the way he's not watching Arthur have a meltdown.

Arthur wants to hold his hand. Arthur wants to grow up. Arthur wants to straighten his shirt collar and wear a big baggy sweater and sit outside when it's cold and rainy like it hasn't been for weeks, with Eames in his crazy orange pants and his old hoodie, looking small and attractive and cradling a mug of tea, smiling with his crooked teeth.

Arthur clenches his own, feels his jaw creak. This is when Eames says something.

Eames doesn't say it with words. Instead, he reaches over, not all that slowly but obvious, so Arthur can lean away if he wants. He touches the muscle right under Arthur's cheekbone, and he presses a little bit as he drags down, asking Arthur to relax.

Arthur shouldn't, but he reaches up and grabs Eames' hand, tries to be gentle about it, but not tentative though he is. He's scared right now, recognizes it, and it's not really specific so much as he's just afraid of himself and the decisions he's going to make, the failures.

He closes the fingers of his hand over the meat of Eames', around his thumb. Arthur's ring finger rests right over Eames' pulse, and it's still somehow a thrill that he can feel it. It kind of grounds him, kind of tears him loose, and Arthur thinks maybe he needs to learn to fly or something to handle it all. Eames' thumb comes up, from where Eames had been holding it away from Arthur's skin lest the touch turn too intimate, too familiar. It almost touches the corner of Arthur's mouth, but it doesn't quite, and Arthur leans a little into the part of Eames that is touching him, lets him take a little of his weight. Eames doesn't draw away, but then he does and Arthur fights to keep the reaction from making his eyes squeeze harder where they're already shut.

"It's our change," Eames says in a soft rasp, and it's either going to shatter Arthur or not so Arthur stands abruptly. He doesn't look at Eames as they change from the tram to a local busline, the one that heads further up the coast and the Cabot Tower stop. This one isn't really full either, and most of the people onboard get off before they hit the Tower station. It's a bit early for tourists yet, though they'll be here soon. Arthur thinks they would need to stand, hold the grips, and bump into each other with even the gentle sways of the bus.

Instead, they sit down, space between them on the bench. Arthur forces himself to lean backwards out of his forward hunch, to relax his shoulders and unclasp his hands. He squeezes one of his legs just above the knee, and doesn't know what to do with his other hand. Eames leans back in his corner spot, sitting half-sideways and letting an arm rest on the bench. Arthur blinks; he hadn't realized Eames' hand was so close.

As they near the tower, almost visible from the front window of the bus, clouds close over the sun. They're high, just a thin overcast blanket, but enough to turn things gray. It makes the coastal land that much more beautiful, somehow reminding Arthur of Iceland. The colors aren't the same, but everything's got that kind of wet look, either just after or just before rain. He remembers that he wants to take Eames there, that it was something he was going to mention to him, before, and didn't.

The bus smoothly decelerates into the stop before the long walk up to the tower proper, the same stop on the Hill where Arthur remembers holding on to Eames' hand, the way neither of them had really had to think about it.

The breeze is much colder here right off the ocean, stiffer with the Atlantic unwilling to release spring just yet, the Labrador Current keeping the Gulf Stream at bay. They walk up to the Tower, up the length of the Hill and off the path until they're moving through the rocks and scrub, new green grass pushing upwards and leaving their shoes wet.

It's a bit of a walk, and Arthur's glad for his coat. Eames is wearing a puffy vest, and he thinks to ask if Eames is cold. Eames just shrugs, and they don't say anything, but Eames lengthens his stride for a moment so he's crunching up the path beside Arthur rather than behind.

Arthur makes the Tower and keeps going, out to where the Hill juts out over the sea, where the wind is fiercest. It lashes at his face and it feels good. A glance at Eames shows that he's feeling it too, looking out across the sea, not quite stormy but temperamental, the tiniest of whitecaps like the prelude to salt in their faces.

It feels like an edge of something, a decision. Maybe Arthur's forcing Eames' hand, or maybe he's just standing here on the edge of the ocean with an android who is a man and sharing some space under the bright gray sky. Arthur really doesn't know what to say. He's never been good with words. For a while, he doesn't say anything, and Eames is a little behind him again. Arthur thinks that if Eames wanted to, he could go back down the path, down the Hill and to the stop, get on the bus and leave Arthur here. Maybe Arthur could jump into the ocean, feel the shock of how cold it'd be, swim to Iceland. He'd have to swing around Greenalnd, let the waves carry him.

He's cold, and he shoves his hands into his coat pockets. Eames is still there, breathing, even though Arthur can't hear him. His heart beats and his eyes blink and he feels the wind, too.

“You’ve been to England,” Arthur says after a moment of quiet. “You were. Born there.” Arthur lets the wind tear the words away, like they won’t have any lasting effect if Eames can’t hold on to them.

Eames doesn’t say anything to that, just lets Arthur stand in the stiff, chill breeze coming off the water, the shadow of the Tower stretching a few hundred meters behind them. Arthur doesn’t move his gaze from the sea, ready to come to terms with whatever Eames chooses to do or say.

He doesn’t expect warm, strong arms around his sides, settling across his waist, and he jumps a little. Eames’ cheek is cool where it barely brushes his own, and when Eames turns his head his nose isn’t cold like Arthur expected it would be. His breath is warm, when the wind doesn’t whip it away.

Arthur shudders a little, in Eames’ grasp. There’s a distance between them, magnified for all that there isn’t space between their bodies.

“No, Arthur,” Eames says, soft in his ear. “I was born here.”

  

* * *

 

"I'd like to invite Ariadne over to visit. Is it okay if she does?"

Arthur asks this one morning when they're out amongst the plants, the weather warm enough that Eames has opted for a tank top ("A-shirt," Arthur had called it, and Eames had felt compelled to say "No one even calls them that any longer, Arthur," and they had ended up in a discussion on tanks versus singlets versus 'wifebeaters.'). It's kind of become a thing, because the weather has gotten warmer but Arthur keeps glancing at Eames' back, and it takes Eames exactly once to realize it's because Arthur can see his tattoo. He wears them when they go out to maintain the garden and deal with the irrigation system, with its ornery polyvinyl piping ("The hell did you even get this, Arthur, it is positively _archaic."_ "Whatever, Eames, it was free,") and easily-clogged spouts. The tanks came in a set, six to a pack, white and thin. Eames went back to the same store, later, got a smaller pack of three, gray, a little thicker and nicer, the ribs soft and stretchy, the tops more square. He's been adjusting his metabolic processes a bit, but doing it the hard way for his organics--using Arthur's gym equipment, mostly. He's liberated a small set of free weights, just a pair of dumbbells, and he uses them in his room. He likes adding a little more mass, a little more definition. He eats more, too, and he wants to get Arthur running with him again, doesn't like to go out alone at night. Maybe it's silly, but he misses the security he feels when they're running side by side, like nothing in the world can touch them while their feet fly over pavement and piers.

When Arthur asks the question, they're by the spider mama, her sprogs nigh-uncontrollable and thus being relegated into pots. These Arthur will bring inside by the kitchen window and then take the rest to the market to give away. This specific species is especially apt at cleaning indoor air as well as looking pretty. Eames carefully cuts one from the mother plant and arranges its fledgling and not-so-fledgling roots into the prepared pot. He's about to respond to Arthur when he realizes the phrasing of the question is deliberate; Arthur isn't asking if it is okay with Eames, but if it's okay in general. The distinction is a little muddy, but it's there.

"I'd be delighted to see her again," Eames says instead of pointing any number of things out. That this is Arthur's flat, that Ariadne is Arthur's friend, that Arthur can do what Arthur wants. He feels the truth is the best choice, anyway, and isn't it what they're making a go at?

Arthur makes a noise of acknowledgement, and the next time Eames catches him glancing at his tattoo, he looks pleased.

"Shall I ready a few special sprogs for her, then?" Eames says. "Do I need to do anything special to them for her flight?" As Eames says this, he stands, dusts the soil off his hands onto his trousers, some drab surplus things with lots of pockets and snaps. He pulls his tank away from his belly, where sweat and humidity have glued it in place. He makes a face and pulls the tank over his head sloppily, and tucks it into a pocket while he runs his other hand through his hair, dirtying it further.

Arthur's late to respond, and Eames may or may not have intended that very thing, and Arthur may or may not know this.

"Yeah," Arthur manages, and Eames offers a jaunty chuck of the head and makes for the shed to find Ariadne a pretty pot, especially for her.

\- -

"So are you gonna put a shirt on when we hit the market, or are you just going like that," Arthur says, like he knows it's a statement and not really a question.

"I'll shower," Eames says simply, like he knows he's not quite driving Arthur mad, not really, but getting there.

\- -

Eames is trying to decide what to wear for Ariadne's visit. Arthur's called her, and she's coming the next day. Arthur's making beef merlot for the occasion, or rather they are, because "Yes, you'd better help me, this isn't a one-pot thing."

It is a one-pot thing, but there's a lot of cutting and slicing and browning and de-glazing. It's really not that complicated, and either one of them could handle it, but it's nice to be in the kitchen together, both getting garlic-smelling fingers. The open layout of the flat--Eames has taken to calling it that--just has the counter and appliances all lined up against the wall, with the foyer to the back, their tall table in the vague 'dining' region, the media center to the side with the hall that leads to Eames' bedroom. The view is nice through the tiny pair of windows over the sink, because it overlooks the gardens. One of Eames' string of cockles and other shells tinkles softly to itself, just between the sliding patio glass and the first cabinet.

The pot bubbles, and the room smells of hot wine and seared meat. It's pleasant, a little too warm to stand right over the pot, and unnecessary since the beef and sauce will need to cook for an hour or more to reduce. Eames thinks maybe he'll wear his red shirt, the tee that fits snug about his chest and around his arms, shows off his back. It's the one he was wearing the day he burned himself, but he still likes it quite a bit. He's getting proud of what he looks like, if pride is something he's allowed.

"Shall I tidy up, then?" Eames asks. Arthur looks around for a moment, because they've already taken care of the cutting boards and the knives and the trash. "For tomorrow," Eames clarifies, rubbing knuckles against his jaw to illustrate his slight stubble. Arthur's eyes catch on it, then Arthur's eyes get wry like he knows exactly what Eames is doing.

"Wear whatever you're comfortable with," Arthur says easily. "She's already seen the worst you have to offer."

Eames gives him a mock-wounded look that Arthur ignores, smoothly returning to tending the pot.

\- -

Eames decides to read in his room. Arthur has introduced him to the world of comics, and he's got a reader that's real lightweight, just enough software to flip pages. He even has to have Arthur download new content manually, but that's fine. He likes reading about superheroes and exploring graphic novels that span cult classic to noveau art form. Eames' absolute favorite, thus far, is something called Grendel, a whole mythos and series' upon series of works. Eames is specifically enamored of a character known as Grendel Prime, who is an absolute badass. He's also a cyborg, of sorts, and there's such a deceptive depth to his story that Eames can read and re-read for hours, FishieFish (Eames named him thusly) on his chest, Eames' fingers stroking idly through the fuzz.

Eames eventually powers down his reader because he can hear Arthur banging about the kitchen, has been for the past half hour or so (Arthur doesn't really bang about, he's careful and steady, but Eames can hear him anyway. He's superpowered like that.) and Eames figures he ought to assist.

When he moseys on out to the living area, Arthur's actually got things sorted and is slouched along the loveseat, some old film scrolling across the media screen and tossing bluish light over his body. He's changed, wearing his lazy gray sweatpants and the shirt's become a white tee that fits him--really rather well.

There's a bit of merlot sauce on the chest, like Arthur spilled it while taking a taste. Eames is briefly insulted that Arthur didn't offer him the same, because he can see that everything's put away for tomorrow. He's going to tell Arthur this, remark upon this offense, but when he looks back Arthur's tilted his head a little, exposing his throat and looking at him from half-closed lids.

The tee's old, threadbare, and Arthur's not shaved in two days. His scruff grows faster than Eames', and the spot of sauce and old shirt should not be--Arthur raises a lazy eyebrow at him, one of his legs cocked, and Eames bloody well knows what he's doing. He sees the moment Arthur sees him get it, and Arthur loses his composure and snorts. It makes Eames huff, and then laugh silently. Arthur's shoulders are shaking a little too, and that makes Eames feel okay.

Eames throws himself down on the perpendicular sofa, dramatic about it. He likes the way it makes him feel, his nerves and sensors registering the brief sensation of freefall. He sighs loudly once he's settled. Perhaps he pouts. "So what are we eating for dinner, then?"

Arthur hasn't moved much, grin fading, still all spread out, inelegant and lazy. "I ordered in," he says, sort of smirking. Eames raises his own brows, but then there's a knock at the door.

Arthur's up before Eames in smooth economical motion for all that he projects indolence, and Eames lets himself watch Arthur's arse. Sweatpants shouldn't be all that alluring, but, well.

\- -

Mrs. Hao lives on the other half of their floor, and she loves cooking for Arthur. She's holding a basket in her hands, and inside the basket are dishes covered in cloths and wrapped in towels and smell absolutely divine.

"It is lovely to see you again," Eames says, somehow magically appearing at the door a half-second after Arthur opens it. Mrs. Hao smiles at him. She finds Arthur charming, he knows, even though he can't speak her particular dialect and gets by with passably-accented Mandarin. She has several plants in her rooms from their garden, and she's known him since he moved in. She wasn't all that surprised when Eames 'moved in' too and she's mentioned on several occasions that she approves of Arthur's--he's yet to discover if the word is 'roommate' or 'significant other,' and he sure as hell isn't going to ask Eames.

Eames, on the other hand, chatters amicably with her, in a dialect he's told Arthur isn't hers but is close. When Eames first met her, he took her hand and kissed it, all slightly-overdone charm, and it had gone over quite well. It's a calculated thing, his accent not flawless but with care put into the pronunciation. Eames gratefully bears the basket away to the kitchen, and Arthur thanks Mrs. Hao and gets a wide smile and a pat on the arm in return. She's missing several teeth, and she's probably four times Arthur's age, and he loves her to pieces because she's just so sweet. Arthur misses having family like that, having an old grandmother to love you and feed you just because.

"Oi," Eames calls, and Arthur smiles at his closed door and goes to help with the plates. It really does smell amazing.

\- -

"I'll be back in an hour or less," Arthur is saying, doing up the next-to-last button on his shirt as he steps into the main area. Eames is washing his hands, soil landing in the basin of the sink, and he raises his eyebrows at Arthur's attire. He's rather done-up, his hair tamed and cuffs buttoned. Even with the warm weather, it looks like he'll keep the sleeves rolled down and--yes, there goes the jacket. No vest or waistcoat, at least, and he's got the top button undone, but Eames feels...strange, Arthur putting himself together like this, picking Ariadne up from the port rather than waiting for her to use transit as she always has before.

Eames thought there was some kind of big deal about being seen together, and here Arthur was, hurrying about, making an extra-special meal, looking well fit like--like he's making an effort, like he has someone to impress. Something about it all is putting Eames ill-at-ease, and he shouldn't feel that way, not at all, because he's looking forward to this, to seeing Ariadne and talking with her and laughing, watching her pretty face break into smiles.

Eames grunts at Arthur in response, and goes outside to get the 'spider sprogs' ready.

\- -

Arthur shoots his cuffs for the second time in as many minutes, tugging at them under his jacket. He touches his face, where he's trimmed things up but not shaved except his neck. He can't always pull off this look unless his hair's short, and it's getting a bit long. He thinks maybe he should cut it again, keep it that way. He thinks maybe he should have dressed casual, or should have just let Ari take herself to the apartments like she always does, shouldn't be standing here looking like himself when he meets her--

Ari's shuttle has already landed, and Arthur's just waiting for her to debark, not sure why he's so nervous. He doesn't have anything to hide from her, he's bared his soul and more to her many times over. She hasn't known him as long as Mal has, though it doesn't feel like it, because of their time as lovers, everything exposed. Yet he feels like he needs approval, or something, like he's in his twenties again and cocksure at the same time he's full of uncertainty.

Partly it was the way Eames was acting before he left, kind of closed-off and very different from the night before. Sometimes their good moods were a little forced, but they were making an effort, and Arthur straight up told him he sucked at people. He doesn't blame Eames, he couldn't, but he doesn't like where they are, the way the footing isn't sure and now how it seems like it can just slide backwards.

Ari saves him from thinking about it more because she's off the ramp and moving, efficient and already treading a familiar path. She sees him, and she gives him a big smile, quickening her step even further until Arthur realizes he's half-jogging to meet her and then she's in his arms, her own tight around him in a way that never fails to surprise him with the strength of her grip.

She kisses his cheek soundly and takes his elbow, and he can only smile at her, feel his eyes crinkle and his dimples show as they head for the exit and the port rail.

"What's all this?" Ari says, flicking a gentle finger along his face. Arthur blushes, and the first thing that comes to mind is _Eames likes it,_ but he doesn't say that. He just shrugs instead, and Ari leads the way onto the first available car. It's moving barely after they're crammed inside, clinging to the grips and jostled by other travelers eager to get into the city proper.

"I missed you," Arthur blurts, because he's not good at people. Because it's Ariadne, it's perfect. She looks up at him and smiles, tightening the arm she's got around his waist. "I missed you too, Arthur," she says, and she doesn't ask how he is right away. He loves her for that. For a lot of things, but right then, especially for that.

Instead, she asks after the gardens and the orchids ("All blooming now, Ari, you've gotta see 'em, they're seriously something else,") and if they've been cooking anything interesting lately ("Made beef merlot just for you,") and finally, "How's Eames?"

That one brings Arthur up short. It's like he was okay with her trademark bluntness before, but now he's stuck without an answer he can just give up in return. He usually works very well with Ariadne, or clashes terribly. Their relationship worked until it didn't, and it was always a kind of mix of both. Their friendship now is no different, and Arthur wonders sometimes if that was the issue, throwing sex and love into something that wasn't quite made for it. Sometimes, he thinks it wouldn't be a big step for them to fall back into bed, and others, it's a chasm left behind them that they'll never cross again.

"I showed him some things," Arthur says, and then, because it's Ari, he amends, "I showed him the truth."

"Is that why you're so uptight?" Ari says breezily, and Arthur almost wants to be grateful for her sidestepping the issue until she says, "When was the last time you got laid?"

Arthur glares at her half-heartedly, but he answers honestly. "I picked up two guys in bars since moving here," he says, "and that's all since you."

Ari makes an expression that shouldn't belong on her pretty face. "Wow." She stares out the windows of the rail car though she can't see through all the raised elbows and sleeves of everybody else on it. "Maybe you should get on that."

Despite himself, Arthur snorts, though he tries to hide it. "I thought I had a Coffee Crisp in my pocket on the way here, but I think I maybe lost it."

"That's cold," Ari says, and Arthur allows himself to laugh and kiss her hair.

 

* * *

 

The moment Ariadne sets her bag down, she's scooped up into a squeezing hug, making her laugh breathlessly and kick her heels. Eames deposits her back on her feet, and she feels her face flushed and her cheeks hurting from smiling. Eames himself is grinning like an idiot, and he's adorable. Ariadne is just as glad to see him as he appears to be her. In a second's time it's like all their phone conversations and late-night communications and brief visits are compressed, then expanded, like what they are and what they have is far more special and real than they knew, but that's okay, because they know it now.

Ariadne realizes she calls him friend, in her heart, because that's what he is.

Behind her, she feels Arthur's hand on her back, and she turns to beam at him. He's smiling a soft smile she hasn't really seen on him in a long time, and he picks up her bag and brings it to one of the sofas. Eames is tugging at her, pulling her outside to show her “your sprogs, love, special just for you.”

Ariadne sees three little pots, teeny things, with baby spider plants inside. “The mama made them special,” Eames says again, still smiling like he can’t stop. “I didn’t--we didn’t know if you would just have one, or how to get them back with you on your trip, so I hope you can, these two little ‘uns here are easy to pack, just use this plastic like so, it’ll protect their leaves, see? And the big ‘un is still pretty small, yeah, and you can maybe take it in your hands...”

Ariadne feels eyes on her, and while Eames is pointing out where to water, “They’re really not picky, love, just give them a sip and they’ll be fine, s’hard to over-water these,” she takes a quick glance over her shoulder. Arthur’s leaning on the side of the entry to the flat, a fond smirk on his face, kind of exasperated. He’s not even looking at her, and when she catches him looking at Eames, his face gets a little red, but the smirk doesn’t fade. It goes a little rueful, and something in Ariadne’s chest lightens.

She uncrosses her arms and moves up to the still-chattering Eames, takes one of his hands, and tugs. He falters to a stop, and she pulls him down as she gets on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Thank you,” she says, settling back down.

Eames grins like a fool and blushes like one, too.

They go inside.

\- -

Arthur doesn’t think Ariadne is going to let Eames get away without telling her about his arm for any longer. Now that the initial excitement has passed, Eames has gone into his room “to fetch something, I’ll just be a minute.” She turns to Arthur, and her eyes say enough.

“He burned his arm on a heating element,” Arthur explains. He gestures to the composting bin outside. “Inside there. A colleague of mine helped us out, and I watched him heal. It was--” Arthur stops. It was amazing, frightening, humbling, and either Ari is gonna get it or she’s not. She’s pretty perceptive, and knows Arthur isn’t much for articulating feelings. “He got a tattoo.”

At this her brows go up. “Did he now.” She’s smiling, and Eames is coming out of his room with his fish and--

“Is that a picture frame?” Arthur asks.

As it turns out, it is a stretched canvas bearing an image hand-painted by one Eames, undiscovered prodigy.

“Oh, hush,” Eames says at Ari’s choice of words. “I was just faffing about, really, Arthur gave me an orchid, yeah, and I wanted to capture it. It’s still so young, so fresh and new, and I really love the way it just kind of reaches, you know? It’s like it knows it only has so long.” Eames pauses. “...what?”

\- -

They’re seated now, with Eames’ painting leaning up against the sofa nearest to the patio doors while Eames is on the loveseat, gesturing at it animatedly, Arthur and Ariadne on the other sofa, listening with bemused interest. Ariadne is asking Eames questions, pointing things out and getting Eames to go on all sorts of tangents about what he’s learned and what he likes.

Arthur’s just sitting there, maybe kind of falling in love.

“Do you paint, like, using...” Ariadne trails off, kind of waving her hand, but Eames gets her immediately, the nuances in the motions of her hands and where her eyes fall on his face speaking where her words do not.

“Oh no, I mean, I could, right, I could make a reproduction, say, forge a Van Gogh from a reference if you will, but this is by hand, see...” Eames goes on to explain how he chose to go only by his sight, his perceptions without any enhancements (“well, to a certain extent, mind,”) and take the canvas with him to the greenhouse, cargo pockets full of brushes and little “pots of paint,” tiny jars of oils and one of thinner. “I had to watch out for the orchids, yeah, because there’s really nowhere to set up, but there’s one worktable in the back and Ariadne, love, I had to be so _careful_ because I worried that Arthur here’d have my head if I got paint on things...”

Arthur imagines him doing it, going out there after he’d fallen asleep, taking the canvas and hooking his thumb into his makeshift pallette (a piece of salvaged plastic from the damaged compost lid, and Arthur wanted to ask if it smelled) with a hole cut in it for his thumb, smoothed out with some random sandpaper.

All Eames had to do was ask, Arthur would have given him anything he’d needed.

Arthur’s not really sure where this mile-a-minute came from, especially because Eames was basically silent and withdrawn when he’d left, but he’d rather have this than that. He wants to tell Eames that he can set up here, in the living room, and get paint on the floor (a small part of him cringes at that, but then he can just see Eames, standing in one of his tank tops and his low-slung cargo pants, paintbrushes in the pockets, paint on his shirt, on his arm by the scar, on his toes, maybe even on his face from touching his brow...)

...Arthur has to blink back and re-engage himself in the conversation. It’s still mostly Eames just running off at the mouth, and Arthur’s saved from commentary when Eames says suddenly, “Oh, well, you haven’t seen the orchids! Arthur! Ariadne, come along.”

Arthur can’t help but feel like he’s missing something. Eames is already leading Ari out of the doors, so maybe he missed it and it’s gone. He stands, but he stares at the painting first, taking time now in the quiet to really take it in. There’s just the fading sounds of Eames’ excited chatter and the ticking of Arthur’s old fridge.

There are colors on a subdued background that’s just off-black. It manages to look deep instead of flat, and the image of the orchid is vibrant, not overdone, but simply there, like a photograph of the same on a darkened field except Arthur can tell it’s a painting, and that’s absolutely a compliment.

Arthur starts when he hears Ariadne holler his name, so he tears his eyes from the canvas and heads outside. They’re waiting for him, preserving the delicate environment inside the greenhouse.

“Eames insisted we wait, that it wouldn’t be right to just go in without you,” Ari says, and Arthur looks from her to Eames.

Eames gestures at the door. “You do the honors, mate.”

Arthur blinks, and then he opens the door for them and leads them inside. Eames has never called him that. He shuts the door again carefully, glancing at the hygrometers and thermometers by force of habit before following them into the cramped space.

Ariadne is wowed by the flowers, and, looking at her face, Arthur allows himself the same. The ghostly tails prove the names of the orchids to be apt, their colors ranging from brilliant white to tints, yellow-greens and light-greens that are closer to the leaves than the petals proper.

Eames is proudly showing off his own, still smaller though it was one of the first to bloom, with thinner tails that are longer than the others. “It’s like Arthur made it special,” he murmurs, not quite for Ariadne’s ears alone, especially as he’s addressing her but looking at Arthur as he says it.

Arthur looks back at him, feels himself give a slow blink. It’s like he’s swimming, and there’s not a lot of air to breathe, and his chest is heavy and he’s okay with all of that, really.

\- -

"Chicks dig scars," Ariadne says, deadpan. It sounds like it's from a movie.

Eames huffs a little, not quite a laugh, and looks down at his arm, away from Arthur and back to Ariadne at the kitchen counter. "Do they now." He shrugs back into his thin zippered jumper, because he feels weirdly underdressed wandering about in just the tank. He’d taken the jumper off to show Ariadne his tattoo, and that got her asking about the scar, finally, which then ended up with the story about the worms and the element and how a “contact of Arthur’s” had helped him heal to his current state.

He can see Arthur shrug from the corner of his eye, leaning against the tall table, and he looks at him without turning his head. "It does make you look like kind of a badass," Arthur supplies.

"Oh," Eames says, raising his head and feeling more confident, leaving the jumper unzipped. "So my stupidity prominently displayed upon my skin is attractive to a potential dalliance, is it?"

“I’d hit that,” Ariadne says from where she’s bent over the warming pot of beef merlot, causing Eames to snort a laugh and then act as though he’s been scandalized. It doesn’t stop Arthur from being open about looking Eames over, and Eames can’t avoid noticing for much longer.

Arthur looks down at his arm, then kind of leans back, taking in Eames' form. Arthur looks a little at his shoulders, his neck, his eyes moving over Eames like a touch. Eames flushes a bit all over under his regard, covered as he is. Arthur says, now looking at a point maybe near one of Eames' nipples hidden under the soft gray tank, "The right tattoos would further the image."

"You want me to look like a common thug, do you," Eames says, something making his voice a little low.

Arthur shrugs, frowning magnanimously. "Well."

Ariadne tastes the beef merlot and makes an approving noise around the spoon. “You could work it,” she says.

Dinner passes with lots of laughter from Ariadne, Eames playing up a real ‘thuggish’ Cockney that at times Arthur can’t even understand, but it keeps him in stitches anyway.

The wine probably helps, a little bit.

Ariadne pronounces the beef merlot “proficient” and Eames pokes her with his forefinger and suggests they retire to the couches, but they end up sitting at the table for an hour as the sun falls in the sky. Finally, Arthur makes to get up and take care of the dishes when Ariadne stops him with a hand on his arm and hints that she’d like to speak to him. There’s a beat before Eames stands and smoothly steps in, gathering things and shooing them from the table. It’s a little too smooth, maybe, but then Ari’s taking Arthur outside to the patio, shutting the glass behind them.

\- -

Eames watches Arthur sit outside with Ariadne, watches their hands touch. Sees them scoot closer, lean towards one another. Watches Arthur look at her.

He washes the dishes, and he simmers.

\- -

Arthur sits close to Ariadne, their knees pointed at each other. The distance between them is a comfortable one, something they've recovered by margins.

They talk about Eames.

Actually, they kind of talk around him. Arthur does, anyway. Ariadne isn’t one for doing that, and really, neither is Arthur, but Eames isn’t something he knows how to handle. He’s way out of his league and he knows it, and he tells her as much. He’s half-worried he’ll screw up and get them found, or that he’ll do or say something that makes Eames decide hiding isn’t worth it, whether he has a choice or not. It’s stupid, and Arthur knows that, but it doesn’t make it any easier to feel it.

"You are a good person, Arthur. It just took you some time to see it." Ariadne smiles at him softly, and he remembers the touch of her lips on the skin of his shoulder, the way her hair felt under his fingers.

“I guess,” he says, twisting his hands together, feeling young and stupid again. That feeling hasn’t really left all day. Hell, since he showed Eames the truth. “I just. I’m kind of lost right now, like, I don’t know how to move forward. I don’t know what to say, or what to do.”

“Did we?” Ariadne asks gently. “There was no plan, Arthur. It just was. It was just living, moving forward. For a while, we were almost going the same direction, if not the same place.”

“Poetic,” Arthur says, and Ariadne just looks at him, so Arthur lets the half-smile fall away.

“The thing with Eames is that he’s got a price on his head, but so do you.” Ariadne is straightforward, looking at her hands and thinking aloud. “You’re going to have to figure out where to go from here, practically, and how to deal with the company.” She stops for a moment to look up and capture his eyes. “You know they’re not going to stop.”

“Have you heard anything?”

Ariadne’s shaking her head before he finishes speaking. “I haven’t talked with Mal since the last time, and as far as I know it’s all passive. They’re really keeping it under, but Arthur,” she says, again holding his gaze, “if they do choose to get aggressive about it, you’re going to have to run.”

Arthur closes his eyes and breathes out.

“I can’t keep running forever, Ari,” he says.

They move beyond that, because neither of them have answers. Ariadne promises to do a little digging, which Arthur suspects she’s already been doing extensively and that this is just her way of tacitly asking him for permission for things that are already done. He wants to get angry, and he wants to kiss her at the same time. The feeling is very familiar.

“I miss you,” he says, and shuts up. He shouldn’t have said that.

"You were very pretty to wear on my arm. Fantastic in bed," Ari counters easily, and it’s not quite enough to defuse whatever he just put out there.

Arthur chuckles, his eyes crinkling. "I knew you were just using me." Ariadne laughs with him, and takes his hand. Arthur lets himself run his fingers across the backs of her knuckles, enjoying her smallness and her strength. Oddly enough, that does it. It reminds him that they’re over, have been over, and that he’s seeking something in the wrong place.

They know each other, like she’s just reminded him. Even if they’re over, It doesn’t stop his chest from getting hot and tight, remembering. It’s still kind of an ache, but there’s something else there, sharper and deeper, and Arthur imagines Ari can see it in his eyes.

After a long time, he says, "I think I'm in trouble, Ariadne."

She doesn't answer him right away, but studies him. He's used to this, her forwardness, and he's always (well, _most_ always) appreciated that about her. "Are you scared?" she finally asks.

Coming from her, it's an honest question. "Yeah," Arthur answers for a while, still holding her hand in his. "But. I think more for Eames, you know?"

Ariadne releases him from her regard, and joins him in looking out over the hazy city. "You’re very selfish,” she says honestly, and Arthur makes himself meet her eyes. “With Eames, though? I think you can do right by him," she says. "You have been. You will. You're one of the strongest people I know, Arthur. And the most stubborn."

Arthur smirks a little. They sit like that, for some time.

\- -

Eames is sipping from a hot mug and staring pointedly away from the small kitchen window when the glass sliders are opened and Ariadne precedes Arthur back into the flat.

“I’m sorry,” she’s saying, “but I’ve got to get back. I’ve got the late shuttle out.” Arthur closes the patio sliders, and Ariadne comes up to Eames, Arthur behind. “One of these days I really want to stay longer,” she says. Then she comes right up to Eames’ space, and she touches his cheek. It makes him blink, because it’s like he’s touched Arthur, with just two fingers barely on the skin. Her fingertips are warm.

“One day, you’re visiting me in Paris,” she says. “Both of you are dragging yourselves out there, and we’re going on stupid touristy wine trips and we’re sitting at cafes and we’re gonna eat _all of the cheese,_ do you understand me?”

"Sweetheart." Eames says, like his breath is gone. He gently takes her hand, kisses it. Ariadne laughs and surprises him with a full-on hug. Her touch is honest, treasured. Eames smiles, because it feels so good.

She blesses him with a final kiss to his own cheek, her eyes big and her smile genuine. She turns to Arthur and pulls him into a hug that is very tight and very close, and Eames can’t begrudge her that, no matter how immaturely he wants to, but even that thought is fading. He thinks of wine tours and nasty mouldy cheeses, but then Arthur’s--they’re--

Ariadne has taken Arthur’s head in her hands and pulled him down, and she’s. They’re kissing. On the lips. It’s a closed-mouth kiss, but Eames starts to hear something like static.

Ariadne murmurs something that Eames doesn’t catch because he’s not paying attention, and then she’s through the door and gone, so fast, like she can’t bear to extend whatever it was, and Arthur’s just standing there, looking odd. He looks poleaxed, but like he expected it all the same, something in his face speaking of inevitability.

He sighs, and locks the door behind Ariadne after a minute. Eames hasn’t moved. He looks over at the couch, because he didn’t see Ariadne take her bag, but it isn’t there.

Arthur says something, and it’s not until he repeats himself, looking curiously at Eames, that Eames hears him. “You want some tea?”

Eames blinks. “I. I had some.”

Arthur’s almost staring at him, and it’s unnerving for reasons Eames can’t identify. Arthur takes a half-step, aborts it, and detours around him to the kitchen. Eames hears him pick up a mug, and when he turns Arthur’s sipping out of it, Eames’ own mug, finishing it off.

\- -

Arthur drinks some of Eames’ tea, because otherwise he would have taken Eames’ face in his hands and kissed the shit out of him.

Ariadne’s gone, her whispered “goodbye” still tingling against his lips. Arthur feels it was a blessing of sorts, the kind Ariadne would give. He’s not sure whose heart she’s more worried for. Maybe both of them. Fucked if he can figure anything out anymore. He stops his pretense of control and puts the mug down a little too hard on the counter, bracing his arms on it and leaning so he feels his muscles bunch up.

He’s barely put his weight on the granite when Eames corners him. It's just about without warning, Arthur with one hip against the counter, maybe giving himself a bruise and looking at nothing, and then Eames comes up behind him. It's something in the way he moves, the way he just looms so Arthur can feel it.

He certainly feels Eames' arms move around him because he’s in that thin raggedy hoodie. They settle on either side of him, and Arthur feels Eames’ biceps and shoulders and forearms as Eames closes him in. Arthur goes very still, and Eames' breathes into his ear, hot.

"Are you trying to make me jealous?" he says, and it's a purr, something that is unlike anything Arthur's heard from him except when Eames lets himself be angry, dangerous. Arthur's body feels electric, and his heart is beating faster. It feels like his veins are dilated, like he's ready to fight.

"Are you?" Arthur says, instead of anything else he probably should say, like 'What the fuck are you doing' or 'Let me go, Eames.'

Eames closes the mere inches of space between their bodies gracefully, just pulls them together. His hips are hard against Arthur's ass, and Eames is hard against Arthur's thigh, pressed there so he can feel it.

"Do I feel jealous?" Eames growls, a touch of the accent he’d been using at dinner, and despite himself, Arthur feels a shiver. Eames responds by sliding his hands to Arthur’s body, crowding him in and closing up, tightening everywhere. Eames is pushing every boundary there is, and he's not being nice about it. It's past time that Arthur pushes back.

Arthur pulls himself forward against Eames' hold, and smoothly slides his hands to Eames' wrists. Just a little pressure, and if Eames resists when he moves, Arthur would break both his hands--if Eames were human. Smoothly, Eames lets Arthur go, and with a deft twist and a single step, he's free, and turned around.

He's almost scary, Arthur thinks. If he didn't know Eames, he'd almost be listening to his body tell him he should see the way Eames is standing, telegraphing his body language, reading the utter lack of subtlety.

Eames' shoulders are forward, his head tilted down so his eyes are hooded. They're not hidden, dark but bright and grey and intense. His pupils are huge, making his eyes look black until Arthur sees the irises and then they’re bright again. His shoulders, his bunched body leaning forward makes him seem so much bigger than he is. It's his eyes that give Arthur the most thrill, a mix of adrenaline and something not far from lust inside them.

Arthur knows Eames won’t hurt him, but oddly enough he wasn't sure of it until this moment. He's sure Eames would not hurt him intentionally, and he knows Eames could, easily, because he holds Arthur's heart in his hands.

It's frightening, exciting, and fucked-up and so very real.

Arthur’s not thinking. He steps right up to Eames, and he’s staring right into those dark eyes, pushing, pushing hard because he can’t not. He’s talking, low, steady, kind of fast, teeth sharp on the words. “That kind of shit is not okay, Eames,” he’s saying, which sounds stupid as fuck, but he can’t stop, he’s still going. “You like it when I get up in your face like this, you’d like it if I pushed you against the wall, if I did this--” Arthur plants both hands on Eames’ chest, lets his fingers grip the muscles, and he shoves Eames hard into the wall abutting the kitchen. “If I got right up here, breathing your air, if I kissed you like biting, yeah? You’d like that? You’d like it if I did this,” he says, sliding a knee between Eames’ legs, and Eames’ eyes go wide, his mouth is open, and he makes this _sound_ that has Arthur pressing his own dick into the meat of Eames’ thigh. Eames isn’t not looming anymore, not at all, his eyes look like they try to flutter shut and that lights Arthur’s blood on fire. “If I made you so hard you’d get stupid with it, you’d let me turn you around, wouldn’t you, you’d let me push you into this wall, fuck you through it while you--while--”

Eames is almost gasping but he’s not making much noise, and no, that’s Arthur, Eames is gaping like a fish but Arthur can’t breathe. He shoves again, half off Eames and half against the wall, blinking back to himself and it’s all ice now, panicky breaths.

“Shit I’m sorry,” Arthur says, the words coming all at once, and he’s already moving out of Eames’ space. “Fuck.”

Eames stares at him, and it’s like he’s staring at himself, or something stupid like they both are.

“Shit,” Arthur whispers, and he tears his eyes away and turns around, and Eames is against the wall by the hall that leads to his, so he goes to Eames’ room instead.

\- -

Arthur doesn’t come out of Eames’ room, and Eames just stands in the kitchen. He didn’t think.

It’s not the first he’s acted before thinking, but it’s certainly the most--intense. It felt very reckless, very human, to push Arthur like that, to cross lines when he bloody well knew he had no right. Not without permission.

And then Arthur had gone and pulled the same bloody bullshit. Pair of arsehole morons, they are.

Eames doesn’t go into Arthur’s room. He doesn’t go outside. He heads to the couch that his painting is leaning against, and where FishieFish is lolling on his side, abandoned. Eames gently shifts the painting over to the loveseat, and sits heavily close to his fish so it rolls into his ready hands. He picks it up and wraps it in his arms around it, pulls it to his chest and curls up on the couch. He puts his face into the shiny fuzz, closes his eyes, makes a small sound.

Eames keeps his face buried in FishieFish, breathing with a little difficulty, until he hears Arthur emerge, feet scuffing along the floor even though he’s wearing just socks. Eames raises his head and moves his chin so just the lower half of his face is fuzzed, and he looks at Arthur, brows up, face earnest and open.

Arthur doesn’t say anything. His hair’s all mussed like he’s run his hands through it. Arthur comes over, starts to crouch to sit on the opposite sofa, and stops himself. Eames watches him until he goes to the loveseat, sits close and Eames is on the far end of the couch, but they’re not facing off anymore. Arthur leans a little, brings his legs up onto the couch. He doesn’t really sprawl, kind of keeps himself tight, and he looks wound but tired.

“I’m sorry,” is all Arthur says, like he’s been thinking about what to say and can’t find anything better than that, frustrated with it but without anything else on offer.

“I won’t do that again,” Eames returns, an offer of his own, eyes a little wide. Arthur looks up at him, like he’s perhaps not satisfied with that answer, but he doesn’t say anything else.

“It’s too fast,” Eames says. Arthur’s shaking his head and nodding at the same time.

“I was too pushy this morning, I shouldn’t--”

Eames speaks over him. “Arthur, there’s a lot you shouldn’t’ve, and I shouldn’t bloody have, but that doesn’t change anything now, does it?”

Again Arthur goes silent, and Eames is a little frustrated. Or a lot frustrated, really, but what’s a bloke to do. He shifts a little, wiggles on his bum so he’s to the side of the couch nearest the loveseat and Arthur. He gets up on the arm so they’re closer, and Arthur’s looking up at him over crossed arms, now, a pose not unlike the one Eames had initially adopted with his fish.

“We’re here, we’re here now and--there’s no fixing this--Arthur, hush,” Eames says softly when he sees Arthur’s brow furrowing fit to get the man thinking too hard.

“Just stop, for a moment,” Eames says. He reaches, starts to, but then halts himself, looking at Arthur from under his lashes. Arthur doesn’t move, so Eames brings his hand up and touches his fingers to Arthur’s cheekbone, slowly moving them down below his eye, across his face and resting at the corner of his mouth. He loves touching Arthur’s face like this, and each time he does it it’s a moment in and of itself, something he can take and keep even if he messes everything else up along the way.

“For there to be something to fix, there’d have to be something broken,” Eames says, the words forming as he speaks them. He blinks, looks at Arthur earnestly, wills him to see. “There’s nothing like that here. It just is,” he says, and Arthur’s face just opens up, like Eames has punched him, like surprise and revelation all at once.

It’s not actually all that flattering, and Eames has to fight down the inappropriate urge to giggle.

They’re quiet, for a time, just looking at each other.

“I forgot to show Ariadne my fish,” Eames says, still holding it to his body.

Arthur breathes.

After a while, he says, “Let’s sleep out here.”

Eames pushes himself to standing, leaving his fish on one of the sofa cushions. He goes to his room and gets his pillow, and his blanket. He drops these on the couch as he walks behind it, glancing out to the garden. He realizes then that Ariadne’s forgotten her spider sprogs.

Eames sighs, and goes into Arthur’s room. He takes the comforter off Arthur’s bed and takes the nearest pillow, the one that looks slept on. He gently drops the comforter into a pile on Arthur, slowly so he can catch it and arrange it, then hands him the pillow.

Eames sorts himself under his blanket and pulls his pillow under his head until he’s reasonably comfortable, and then he finds FishieFish in the folds. He holds it to his chest, and then, on impulse, pulls it out and holds his arm outstretched. It puts FishieFish almost in Arthur’s face.

“What?”

“Kiss him goodnight?”

“...Eames?”

“It’s necessary.”

Eames doesn’t know if Arthur is going to ignore him or perhaps make a silly kissy noise, but he startles when he feels Arthur’s hand tentatively cover his, to pull the fish a little closer. Eames cranes his head, and he can just see Arthur press his lips between googly eyes, and then he lets go.

Eames hand is cool where Arthur’s was warm over it. He brings FishieFish close to his own face and pops a little kiss on or about its forehead, complete with little kissy noise. It’s not affected--it’s just necessary.

Eames stretches out, then curls up. He can feel Arthur watching him, but he doesn’t want to think any longer, or talk any longer, so he brings his fish close and closes his eyes and hopes to sleep.

He’s drifting when he realizes his comforter smells like Arthur, and he sighs, warm. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is Act I of an 118K WIP that's still being posted on the meme, and I'm going to start tossing chapters up on this here archive. It's been beta'd up through the pretentiously dubbed Act I. Remaining mistakes are all mine, but feel free to steal them and tell me where fixes are needed. For kmeme readers, note that there will probably be some reworking of a few things especially in Act I, general, continual ironing out, etcetera. Full text thus far can be found at the prompt link, and I generally update on Mondays.
> 
> Inception kmeme readers, I <3 you. :) If anybody has better ideas for the summary, do let me know.
> 
> Beta acknowledgements to [ey_up](http://ey_up.livejournal.com/) and [MikaHaeli8](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MikaHaeli8/pseuds/MikaHaeli8), extra special thanks to ey_up for tolerating my "wate, how do Britishish people say this? And also this?" chats. <3
> 
> I think it is highly important to note that Arthur's halting speech is heavily inspired by [Patience, a Steady Hand](http://archiveofourown.org/works/170021) by [Helenish](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Helenish/pseuds/Helenish). That's the first Inception fic I ever read, and it's my favorite to this day.


End file.
